The most intense EELS signal from gold (Au) can be obtained from Au M_4,5-edges at 2206 eV in the high core-loss spectrum, and the optimized EDS signal from Au is obtained from Au L_α1 (9.711 keV) and Au L_α2 (9.628 keV). With such EELS and EDS signals with the same dwell time (e.g. in simultaneous EDS and EELS measurements), for a thin TEM sample the EELS signal is more than twice as sensitive as the EDS data and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for EELS measurement is four times better than that for EDS data.

Table 1356 lists the comparison of EELS and EDS measurements on thin TEM samples with Au elements. The comparisons are based on the same data acquisition condition, consequently the same electron dose used.