Dr. Lin Zhou, Staff Scientist, Ames National Laboratory and Associate Professor, Materials Science and Engineering, Iowa State University. 

The properties of materials are dictated by their internal atom arrangement. Advanced electron microscopy techniques, such as (scanning) transmission electron microscopy, with its many different operation modes for imaging, diffraction, and spectroscopy, have become indispensable for simultaneous structure, chemistry, and internal magnetic/electric/strain field probing down to the atomic level. Increasingly sophisticated specimen holders that can expose materials to external stimuli (thermal, stress/strain, electric, and magnetic) during imaging, expanding electron-beam techniques from characterizing materials in 3D to 4D studies that include spatial and temporal aspects. In this presentation, various electron beam microscopy techniques have been used separately or in tandem in our collaborative studies to 1) enhance coercivity of alnico permanent magnets, 2) reveal formation mechanism and dynamics of magnetic skyrmion lattices, and 3) understand interface structure that causes coherence loss in superconducting qubits. Through these examples, we will illustrate how electron microscopy has enabled the development of materials and, conversely, how investigating the structure and behavior of the most challenging materials helps to advance the state of the art in electron microscopy.