The Stobbs factor in HRTEM: Hunt for a phantom?

Abstract

A long standing problem in high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) was first publicly formulated by Hÿtch and Stobbs in 1994, who found that experimental images lack in contrast approximately by a factor of three compared to simulated images of equal mean intensity [1]. Since then, numerous not too successful attempts were made to explain this huge contrast discrepancy, which is often called Stobbs-factor problem, contrast-mismatch problem or factor-of-three problem.