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Electron coincidence spectroscopy in an ultrahigh vacuum scanning transmission electron microscope has been used to study the generation pathways for secondary (SE) and Auger electrons (AE) excited by high‐energy incident electrons. Energy and momentum transfer of inelastically scattered 100 keV primary electrons have been correlated with energy selected SE and AE for both thin 〈111〉 oriented Si crystals and amorphous C films. Coincidence spectra from the valence excitation region indicate that bulk plasmon decay is not the primary production channel for SE in Si(111) and that SE result partially from the decay of ionizations from deep in the valence band. Energy deposition by the primary beam is responsible for SE production at excitation energies above the valence region. At most one SE is emitted from the entrance surface of a thin film for each inelastically scattered 100 keV primary electron. An enhancement in both the SE yield and generation probability is observed at the C K ionization edge. Correl...

New ways to measure detection properties of slow‐scan charge‐coupled device (CCD) cameras suitable for electron microscopy, mainly based on the statistics of single‐electron events, are discussed. The experiments concentrate on the newly introduced Gatan 679 slow‐scan CCD camera. It has been established that for this instrument (if equipped with a thin YAG scintillator) 20% of the true intensity is recorded at the highest detectable spatial frequency (Nyquist frequency), limited mostly by the modulation transfer function of the YAG scintillator. The detection quantum efficiency is 0.45 for single 100‐kV electrons and 0.15 for single 400‐kV electrons, and is approaching unity for intensities higher than ten electrons. Furthermore, nonlinearity of the response is smaller than deviations in the image intensity due to shot noise. Examples are presented illustrating the detection properties of slow‐scan CCD cameras for electron imaging, which also include high dynamic range and negligible geometric distortion.

The effects of beam precession on the Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (EELS) signal of the carbon K edge in a 2 monolayer graphene sheet are studied. In a previous work, we demonstrated the use of precession to compensate for the channeling-induced reduction of EELS signal when in zone axis. In the case of graphene, no enhancement of EELS signal is found in the usual experimental conditions, as graphene is not thick enough to present channeling effects. Interestingly, though it is found that precession makes it possible to increase the collection angle, and, thus, the overall signal, without a loss of signal-to-background ratio.