PED possesses many advantageous attributes that make it well suited to investigating crystal structures via direct methods approaches:
# Quasi-kinematical diffraction patterns: While the underlying physics of the electron diffraction is still dynamical in nature, the conditions used to collect PED patterns minimize many of these effects. The scan/de-scan procedure reduces ion channeling because the pattern is generated off of the zone axis. Integration via precession of the beam minimizes the effect of non-systematic inelastic scattering, such as Kikuchi lines. Few reflections are strongly excited at any moment during precession, and those that are excited are generally much closer to a two-beam condition (dynamically coupled only to the forward-scattered beam). Furthermore, for large precession angles, the radius of the excited Laue circle becomes quite large. These contributions combine such that the overall integrated diffraction pattern resembles the kinematical pattern much more closely than a single zone axis pattern.
# Broader range of measured reflections: The Laue circle (see Ewald sphere) that is excited at any given moment during precession extends farther into reciprocal space. After integration over multiple precessions, many more reflections in the zeroeth order Laue zone (ZOLZ) are present, and as stated previously, their relative intensities are much more kinematical. This provides considerably more information to input into direct methods calculations, improving the accuracy of phase determination algorithms. Similarly, more higher order Laue zone (HOLZ) reflections are present in the pattern, which can provide more complete information about the three-dimensional nature of reciprocal space, even in a single two-dimensional PED pattern.
# Practical robustness: PED is less sensitive to small experimental variations than other electron diffraction techniques. Since the measurement is an average over many incident beam directions, the pattern is less sensitive to slight misorientation of the zone axis from the optic axis of the microscope, and resulting PED patterns will generally still display the zone axis symmetry. The patterns obtained are also less sensitive to the thickness of the sample, a parameter with strong influence in standard electron diffraction patterns.
# Very small probe size: Because x-rays interact so weakly with matter, there is a minimum size limit of approximately 5 µm for single crystals that can be examined via x-ray diffraction methods. In contrast, electrons can be used to probe much smaller nano-crystals in a TEM. In PED, the probe size is limited by the lens aberrations and sample thickness. With a typical value for spherical aberration, the minimum probe size is usually around 50 nm. However, with Cs corrected microscopes, the probe can be made much smaller.