The Energy-Loss Spectrum

Abstract

The term “energy-loss” spectrometry implies that we are only interested in inelastic interactions, but the spectrum will also contain electrons which have not lost any energy so we need to consider elastic scattering as well. We’ll deal with three principal regions of the energy-loss spectrum:

• The zero-loss peak, which consists primarily of elastic forward-scattered electrons, but also contains electrons that have suffered minor (unresolvable) energy losses.

• The low-loss region up to an energy loss of ~50 eV contains electrons which have interacted with the weakly bound outer-shell electrons of the atoms in the specimen.

• Electrons in the high-loss region have interacted with the more tightly bound inner-shell or “core” electrons.