Stripe TEM as a method of calculating chemical profiles across interfaces between solids or core-shell structures using electron energy-loss spectroscopic profiling

Abstract

Abstract Electron energy-loss spectroscopic profiling is a hybrid method between imaging and spectroscopy. It can be applied in a transmission electron microscope with an imaging energy filter operated in spectroscopy mode such that an image is recorded on a two-dimensional detector with an interface parallel to the energy-dispersive direction. This reveals directly, i.e., in one exposure, how a specific energy-loss near-edge structure varies across the interface. The aim of this work is to describe a method called stripeTEM to extract quantitative chemical profiles from spectroscopic imaging, discuss practical implementations, compare the method to more widely used nano-analytical techniques, and to present some recent applications to materials science. Measurements of diffusion and segregation in planar thin films as well as the observation of core-shell structures of nano-particles are reviewed.