Exploring the limits of TEM-EELS

纳米技术的前景为使用电子显微镜检查小物体的详细结构提供了额外的动力，这些小物体的尺寸小于100纳米，并达到原子尺度。物理学家已经设计出了在如此小的尺度上提取最大数量信息的技术。其中之一是电子能量损失谱（EELS），通常在透射电子显微镜（TEM）中进行。在TEM-EELS中，详细分析入射电子和样品原子之间的能量交换，以提供原子尺度上的化学成分和结构信息。该技术的进一步进展需要增加有关电子与物质相互作用物理学的知识，而这项研究提案旨在提供此类知识。

The prospects of nanotechnology have provided additional impetus for the use of electron electron microscopes to examine the detailed structure of small objects, less than 100nm in size and down to the atomic scale. Physicists have devised techniques for extracting the maximum amount of information on such a small scale. One of these is electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS), usually carried out in a transmission electron microscope (TEM). In TEM-EELS, the energy exchange between incoming electrons and atoms of the specimen is analyzed in detail, to provide information about chemical composition and structure on an atomic scale. Further progress in this technique requires increased knowledge about the physics of the interaction of electrons with matter, and this research proposal is aimed at providing such knowledge.