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Study of inelastic mean free path of metal nanostructures using energy filtered transmission electron microscopy imaging
Author(s) -
GHOSH T.,
BARDHAN M.,
BHATTACHARYA M.,
SATPATI B.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of microscopy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.569
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1365-2818
pISSN - 0022-2720
DOI - 10.1111/jmi.12240
Subject(s) - mean free path , inelastic mean free path , transmission electron microscopy , materials science , scanning transmission electron microscopy , inelastic scattering , electron , molecular physics , optics , electron microscope , microscopy , nanorod , free electron model , atomic physics , computational physics , physics , scattering , nanotechnology , quantum mechanics
Summary We report a simple method for measuring the inelastic mean free path of nanostructures of known geometry using energy filtered transmission electron microscopy imaging. The mean free path of inelastic electrons was measured by using systems having known symmetry, such as cylindrical or cubic, combined with Poisson statistics without employing the knowledge of microscope parameters, namely the convergence angle and the collection angle. Having inherent symmetry of such systems, their absolute thickness can be measured from their two‐dimensional projection images. We have calculated mean free path of inelastic scattering of electrons in gold, silver and nickel doing case study research by employing gold nanorod, silver nanocube and nickel nanorod lying on a carbon‐coated TEM grid at two different electron energies (viz. 200 and 300 keV) following this alternative approach. Results obtained using such alternative approach were verified using microscope parameters.