Practical Electron Microscopy and Database

In EM measurements, electrons also scatter inelastically with phonons. These energy losses are of the order of a few tens of millielectronvolts (meV) and can therefore not be detected with transmission EELS measurement in an electron microscope. However, these quasi-elastic scattering processes broaden the zero-loss peak of EELS on the high-energy side.

In EM systems, the development of energy-filtered imaging attachments [1 - 5] has allowed removing the intensity from electrons scattered inelastically by any mechanism other than phonon scattering.

Diffuse scattering induced by thermal vibrations can be treated as electron–phonon scattering using a Debye phonon model [6 - 7].

Page3375 lists the behaviors and properties of various inelastic electron scatterings in electron interaction with materials, including inter- and intra-band transitions, inner shell ionization, phonon excitation and plasmon excitation.

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