Electron holographic tomography for mapping the three-dimensional distribution of electrostatic potential in III-V semiconductor nanowires

Electron holographic tomography (EHT), the combination of off-axis electron holography with electron tomography, is a technique, which can be applied to the quantitative 3-dimensional (3D) mapping of electrostatic potential at the nanoscale. Here, we show the results obtained in the EHT investigation of GaAs and GaAs-AlGaAs core-shell nanowires grown by Au-catalysed metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy. The unique ability of EHT of disentangling the materials mean inner potential (MIP) from the specimen projected thickness allows reconstruction of the nanowire 3D morphology and inner compositional structure as well as the measurement of the MIP.