Software Developmental Projects

Why develop our own software? Data acquisition, processing, measurements and modeling are all critical parts of electron microscopy. From the development of X-ray crystallography, it can be said that well-designed software often embody and crystallize the state of art knowledge and provide the impetus for further development of the field. There are many needs for software in electron microscopy; our effort to develop web-based electron diffraction and imaging simulation tools is one of our attempts to address these needs (see WebEMAPS). This page summarize the software development efforts in our group and provides some useful information about modeling and simulation.

List of current projects:

• Software for nanostructure modeling (nanoparticles, nanotubes, nanocrystals, interfaces)
• Electron diffraction simulation based on kinematical and dynamic theories using multislice and Bloch wave method
• Electron imaging simulation for aberration-corrected STEM and HREM
• Phase retrieval and diffractive imaging

List of software developed:

• WebEMAPS, an on-line website for simulation of electron diffraction patterns, images and structure visualization at emaps.mrl.uiuc.edu
• EXTAL, electron structure factor and lattice refinement program by fitting diffraction pattern using dynamical theory
• Zmult, a program based on the multislice method for diffraction and imaging simulation, including annular dark field (ADF) STEM with aberration corrector
• Probe, a program to simulate electron probes, Ronchigram, CTF for aberration correctors

Modeling and Software Information:

Click here for a description of how to build multiple twinned particles written by Weijie Huang (The documents is a part of his Copyrighted thesis).

Click here for a description of the phase retrieval program we developed.

Software Download:

Click here for a DigitalMicrograph Pluggin, which has a number useful utilities including coverting Fuji imaging plate files, draw a lattice on images, read and write small header file compatible with PC. The file in zip format should be extracted and placed inside the Pluggin folder of DigitalMicrograph. The functions are grouped under a new menu called UIUC_QEM.