EMC 2008 14th European Microscopy Congress 1–5 September 2008, Aachen, Germany

Abstract

Electron energy loss is a physical process whose probability decreases sharply with the amount of energy loss involved in any single inelastic scattering event 1. This physical fact means that the electron energy-loss spectrum (EELS), after correcting for multiple scattering effects, has a very strong intensity at low energy loss but the intensity decays rapidly with the increase in energy loss. When the electrons not losing any significant energy (the so-called zeroloss beam) is also considered, the dynamical range of EELS is huge and often exceeds the capability of any physical detectors.