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Energy‐filtered high‐resolution electron microscopy and composition‐sensitive imaging
Author(s) -
Wang Z. L.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
microscopy research and technique
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.536
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1097-0029
pISSN - 1059-910X
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-0029(19960215)33:3<279::aid-jemt5>3.0.co;2-l
Subject(s) - ionization , resolution (logic) , image resolution , energy (signal processing) , electron , materials science , electron microscope , secondary electrons , optics , atomic physics , analytical chemistry (journal) , physics , chemistry , ion , computer science , artificial intelligence , quantum mechanics , chromatography
Energy‐filtered electron imaging is one of the future directions of high‐resolution electron microscopy (HREM). In this paper, characteristics and applications of energy‐selected HREM are illustrated. Image contrast can be dramatically improved with the use of an energy filter. High‐resolution chemical‐sensitive imaging using ionization edge loss electrons is demonstrated in studies on Ni/Ti and A1/Ti multilayer thin films. It has been shown that the spatial resolution of energy‐selected ionization edge electron images is dominated by the signal‐to‐noise ratio. Experimental parameters which may be selected to improve the signal‐to‐noise ratio are discussed. It is pointed out that since the width of the energy‐selecting window is small, the energy‐filtered ionization edge electron image is sensitive to the specimen composition, but the calculation of the specimen composition based on the energy‐filtered images relies on the integrated ionization cross‐sections which are largely determined by the solid state effects. Therefore, the energy‐filtered ionization image should be referred as composition‐sensitive image rather than compositional image. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.