Direct electron detectors in scanning transmission electron microscopy give unprecedented possibilities for structure analysis at the nanoscale. In electronic and quantum materials, this new capability gives access to, for example, emergent chiral structures and symmetry-breaking distortions that underpin functional properties. Quantifying nanoscale structural features with statistical significance, however, is complicated by the subtleties of dynamic diffraction and coexisting contrast mechanisms, which often results in a low signal-to-noise ratio and the superposition of multiple signals that are challenging to deconvolute. Here we apply scanning electron diffraction to explore local polar distortions in the uniaxial ferroelectric Er(Mn,Ti)O₃. Using a custom-designed convolutional autoencoder with bespoke regularization, we demonstrate that subtle variations in the scattering signatures of ferroelectric domains, domain walls, and vortex textures can readily be disentangled with statistical significance and separated from extrinsic contributions due to, e.g., variations in specimen thickness or bending. The work demonstrates a pathway to quantitatively measure symmetry-breaking distortions across large areas, mapping structural changes at interfaces and topological structures with nanoscale spatial resolution.

扫描透射电子显微镜中的直接电子探测器为纳米尺度的结构分析提供了前所未有的可能性。在电子和量子材料中，这种新功能可以提供诸如新兴手性结构和支撑功能特性的对称破缺扭曲等。然而，由于动态衍射和共存对比机制的微妙性，量化具有统计意义的纳米级结构特征变得复杂，这通常会导致低信噪比和难以解卷积的多个信号的叠加。在这里，我们应用扫描电子衍射来探索单轴铁电 Er(Mn,Ti)O ₃中的局部极性畸变。使用具有定制正则化的定制设计的卷积自动编码器，我们证明了铁电域、畴壁和涡旋纹理的散射特征的细微变化可以很容易地通过统计显着性来解开，并与由于样本变化等引起的外在贡献分开。厚度或弯曲。这项工作展示了一种定量测量大面积对称破缺扭曲的途径，以纳米级空间分辨率绘制界面和拓扑结构的结构变化。