Near-simultaneous dual energy range EELS spectrum imaging

A new analytical method for characterising the bonding environment at rough interfaces in high-k gate stacks using electron energy loss spectroscopy

“…In such cases stability of the cold field emitter as well as room environment over the period of acquisition can have an important effect on the measurement (the total acquisition time for this particular spectrum image was around 4 minutes). Although the general trends observed in figures 10(b)-10(d) were reproduced in other spectrum images, including those acquired at a higher dispersion of 0.1 eV/ channel, a more systematic approach, in particular using near-simultaneous acquisition of the low-loss and coreloss regions of the EELS spectrum [21][22], is required to unambiguously confirm if these are due to a real physical phenomenon.…”

“…by using the dual EELS system [22]. The change of edge shape and the background removal problem caused by multiple scattering can be removed by Fourier logarithmic deconvolution while the effect of elastic scattering can be removed by normalisation by the low loss intensity.…”

“…However, recent experimental results [20] indicate that this problem can be virtually eliminated by Fourier-log deconvolving the core loss spectrum to remove multiple inelastic scattering. Unfortunately the fast beam switch [21][22] required for acquiring the low loss region at each spectrum image pixel was not installed on the instrument used in this study. As a result only those pixels in the spectrum image where the extracted Si-L 2,3 signal was positive were selected for analysis.…”

Accurate measurement of absolute experimental inelastic mean free paths and EELS differential cross-sections

“…This makes it difficult to take account of the origin shift and surface layers using plots against axial position. For the data obtained here, the most stable results are obtained by plotting of t 2 against (t/λ) 2 and taking the slope tips with other shapes may require other approaches. Here, the values of t are interpolated onto the sampling points of t/λ using a quartic fit to a plot of t 2 versus axial position.…”

“…DualEELS is a system for EELS that allows the low loss and core loss region of the spectrum to be recorded at each pixel of a spectrum image (SI) [2,3]. This provides the complete energy range of the spectrum, allowing a more complete analysis of the resulting data.…”