The electron energy loss spectrometer developed at Berkeley differs from
most other ones in four ways: 1) it uses the projector lens crossover as the
spectrometer entrance object plane, 2) its magnet is asymmetric so that the
entrance object is de-magnified about 5x, 3) it counts electrons admitted
through the energy-selecting slit singly at rates up to 20MHz while adding
zero dark count, and 4) it fits neatly at the back of the available leg
space of the electron microscope, and requires no substantial alterations to
the microscope.
The energy resolution attainable routinely at any primary voltage is 3eV
over an energy loss range 0 to 1keV, as illustrated by resolving the π*
transition on the K-edge of amorphous carbon (Fig. 1). The 3 eV limit comes
mainly from 120Hz stray magnetic fields (the 60Hz component has been
compensated out). Fast scanning of the spectrum improves the resolution to
1eV (Fig. 2). This indicates that with proper magnetic shielding of the
electron flight path, especially in the microscope viewing chamber which is
made out of brass, the energy resolution attainable with the spectrometer
will be limited only by the energy spread of the primary beam.