Korean Journal of Materials Research ISSN:1225-0562(Print) 2287-7258(Online) 한국재료학회지

In this study, using deep learning, super-resolution images of transmission electron microscope (TEM) images were generated for nanomaterial analysis. 1169 paired images with 256 × 256 pixels (high resolution: HR) from TEM measurements and 32 × 32 pixels (low resolution: LR) produced using the python module openCV were trained with deep learning models. The TEM images were related to DyVO₄ nanomaterials synthesized by hydrothermal methods. Mean-absolute-error (MAE), peak-signal-to-noise-ratio (PSNR), and structural similarity (SSIM) were used as metrics to evaluate the performance of the models. First, a super-resolution image (SR) was obtained using the traditional interpolation method used in computer vision. In the SR image at low magnification, the shape of the nanomaterial improved. However, the SR images at medium and high magnification failed to show the characteristics of the lattice of the nanomaterials. Second, to obtain a SR image, the deep learning model includes a residual network which reduces the loss of spatial information in the convolutional process of obtaining a feature map. In the process of optimizing the deep learning model, it was confirmed that the performance of the model improved as the number of data increased. In addition, by optimizing the deep learning model using the loss function, including MAE and SSIM at the same time, improved results of the nanomaterial lattice in SR images were achieved at medium and high magnifications. The final proposed deep learning model used four residual blocks to obtain the characteristic map of the low-resolution image, and the super-resolution image was completed using Upsampling2D and the residual block three times.