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When will Low-Contrast Features be Visible in a STEM X-Ray Spectrum Image?a

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2015

Chad M. Parish
Chad M. Parish*
Affiliation:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Radiation Effects and Microstructural Analysis Group, 1 Bethel Valley Road, MS6064 Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA
*
*Corresponding author.parishcm@ornl.gov
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Abstract

When will a small or low-contrast feature, such as an embedded second-phase particle, be visible in a scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) X-ray map? This work illustrates a computationally inexpensive method to simulate X-ray maps and spectrum images (SIs), based upon the equations of X-ray generation and detection. To particularize the general procedure, an example of nanostructured ferritic alloy (NFA) containing nm-sized Y2Ti2O7 embedded precipitates in ferritic stainless steel matrix is chosen. The proposed model produces physically appearing simulated SI data sets, which can either be reduced to X-ray dot maps or analyzed via multivariate statistical analysis. Comparison to NFA X-ray maps acquired using three different STEM instruments match the generated simulations quite well, despite the large number of simplifying assumptions used. A figure of merit of electron dose multiplied by X-ray collection solid angle is proposed to compare feature detectability from one data set (simulated or experimental) to another. The proposed method can scope experiments that are feasible under specific analysis conditions on a given microscope. Future applications, such as spallation proton–neutron irradiations, core-shell nanoparticles, or dopants in polycrystalline photovoltaic solar cells, are proposed.

Keywords

STEMX-ray mappingspectrum imagingsimulation
Type
Techniques and Equipment Development
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , June 2015 , pp. 706 - 724
Copyright
© Microscopy Society of America 2015. This is a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. 

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Footnotes

a

This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy. The publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).

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