Enhancement of resolution in core-loss and low-loss spectroscopy in a monochromated microscope

The significant enhancement of the energy resolution in the new generation of commercially available monochromated transmission electron microscopes presents new challenges in term of selecting the correct experimental conditions and understanding the various effects that can potentially influence the quality of the EELS data. In this respect we investigated the effect of point spread function of the detector and spectrum-diffraction mixing on the energy resolution and the intensity of the zero loss peak tails. Alternative approaches to improve the energy resolution by mathematical methods have been tested. By using a simple and commonly available test case (Si L2,3 edges) we assessed the efficiency of the deconvolution algorithms to improve the resolution. The results show that the deconvolution is not always successful in improving the resolution of the core loss EELS data and the results may not always be reliable. Contrary to this, the application of the Richardson–Lucy deconvolution algorithm on some bandgap measurements data appears to be very effective. The procedure proved successful in removing the contribution of the zero-loss peak tails and allows an easier access to spectroscopic information starting at energy losses as low as of 0.5 eV with monochromated spectra and 1 eV with the non-monochromated spectra.