Comparison of Multislice Computer Programs for Electron Scattering Simulations and The Bloch Wave Method

Abstract As the demand for quantitative analysis of Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) images and diffraction patterns increases, questions arise about the reliability of computer simulations using different software packages and algorithms that are used for comparison with the experiment. Here, we compared five multislice programs, which are (with the exception of Cerius2) freely available, with each other and also a Bloch wave code. Since multislice method propagates the electron beams through the crystal slice by slice, the development of differences between the programs can easily be seen by comparing amplitudes and phases of different beams vs. thickness (Pendelloesung plot). We calculated Pendelloesung plots for InP [001] in zone axis and tilted beam orientations and the Si [111] forbidden reflections using the following codes: Cerius2, NCEMSS, Autoslic3, Multis4, EMS5 and an updated Bloch wave code written by J.M. Zuo4.