Time-resolved observation of thermal oscillations by transmission electron microscopy

Time-dependent acoustic oscillations driven by stochastic thermal force have been observed by means of transmission electron microscopy. An electron-beam current passing in the vicinity of the edge of the vibrating sample, and thereby modulated, was led through an aperture at the image plane and measured with the electron counting technique as the power spectral density function, allowing the resonant frequency and the Q factor to be found. This enables estimation of the Young's modulus and the internal friction. The method can be extended to the investigation of the elastic properties of nanoscaled samples. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.