This paper highlights future developments in the field of in-situ transmission electron microscopy, as applied specifically to the issues of deformation in thin films and nanostructured materials. Emphasis is place on the forthcoming technical advances that will aid in extraction of improved quantitative experimental data using this technique.

The crystallization behavior of amorphous TiOxNy (x>>y) thin films was investigated by in-situ transmission electron microscopy. The Johnson-Mehl-Avrami-Kozolog (JMAK) theory is used to determine the Avrami exponent, activation energy, and the phase velocity pre-exponent. Addition of nitrogen inhibits diffusion, increasing the nucleation temperature, while decreasing the growth activation energy. Kinetic variables extracted from individual crystallites are compared to JMAK analysis of the fraction transformed and a change of 6 percent in the activation energy gives agreement between the methods. From diffraction patterns and index of refraction the crystallized phase was found to be predominantly anatase.

Mechancial surface treatments are known to be effective at improving the fatigue resistance of metallic alloys at elevated temperatures (~;550-600 aC), even though the near-surface compressive residual stress fields have been annealed out. We have investigated the thermal stability of near-surface microstructures induced by deep rolling and laser-shock peening in an austentic stainless steel (AISI 304) and a titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) using in situ hot-stage transmission electron microscopy. It is found that the improvements in fatigue resistance at elevated temperature are related to the high-temperature stability of the work-hardened near-surface microstructure in each case.

It is demonstrated that energy-filtered transmission electron microscope imaging of a planar interface between two crystals can be optimized by orienting a sample so that the interface is parallel to the electron beam, but not directly on a zone axis. This orientation reduces diffraction contrast in the unfiltered (and zero-loss) image, which in turn, reduces residual diffraction contrast in raw energy-filtered images (EFI), jump-ratio images and elemental maps. This tilting procedure produces EFI which are more directly interpretable and, in many cases, possess superior spatial resolution and compositional contrast compared to EFI acquired directly on a zone axis.