In this chapter, density functional theory (DFT) is described for calculation of electron energy-loss near-edge structure (ELNES) obtained in STEM-EELS. Fine structure in ELNES originates from an electron transition from a coreorbital to unoccupied bands. The spectral profile of ELNES reflects the partial density of states (PDOS) of the unoccupied bands, and can provide information about electronic structures and chemical bonding around objective atoms in materials.
OverviewRecent improvements in monochromators and aberration correctors give tremendous benefits for measurements of ELNES in STEM. With the aid of a monochromator, better than 0.1 eV energy resolution can be achieved, and this improvement enables us to obtain finer spectral profiles, namely more detailed electronic structure information (Terauchi et al., 1999;Tiemeijer, 1999). The spatial resolution of ELNES now reaches to sub-Å with the aid of an aberration corrector for the incident electron probe. As described in Chapter 7, ELNES observations from a single atomic column are now possible using modern STEM systems equipped with aberration correctors (Kimoto et al., 2007;Muller et al., 2008;Varela et al., 2004). In addition to the energy and spatial resolutions, time-resolved ELNES has also been developed recently Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy of Nanomaterials Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com by UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA @ SAN DIEGO on 04/12/15. For personal use only.