It is difficult, in general, to perform quantitative EELS to determine, for example, relative or absolute compositions of elements with relatively high atomic numbers (using, e.g., K edge energies from 500 eV to 2000 eV), to study ELNES (energy loss near edge structure) signal using the white lines to determine oxidation states, and to analyze EXELFS (extended energy loss fine structure) to study short range ordering. In all these cases, it is essential to have high signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio (low systematical error) with high overall counts, and sufficient energy resolution (∽ 1 eV), requirements which are, in general, difficult to attain. The reason is mainly due to three important inherent limitations in spectrum acquisition with EELS in the TEM. These are (i) large intrinsic background in EELS spectra, (ii) channel-to-channel gain variation (CCGV) in the parallel detection system, and (iii) difficulties in obtaining statistically high total counts (∽106) per channel (CH). Except the high background in the EELS spectrum, the last two limitations may be circumvented, and the S/N ratio may be attained by the improvement in the on-line acquisition procedures. This short report addresses such procedures.
