Instruments combining a 100 kV transmission electron microscope (TEM) with scanning transmission (STEM), secondary electron (SEM) and x-ray energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) attachments to give analytical capabilities are becoming increasingly available and useful. Some typical applications in the field of materials science which make use of the small probe size and thin specimen geometry are the chemical analysis of small precipitates contained within a thin foil and the measurement of chemical concentration profiles near microstructural features such as grain boundaries, point defect clusters, dislocations, or precipitates. Quantitative x-ray analysis of bulk samples using EDS on a conventional SEM is reasonably well established, but much less work has been performed on thin metal foils using the higher accelerating voltages available in TEM based instruments.
