Single-atom electron energy loss spectroscopy of light elements

Ryosuke Senga and Kazu Suenaga ()
Additional contact information
Ryosuke Senga: Nano-Materials Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)
Kazu Suenaga: Nano-Materials Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract Light elements such as alkali metal (lithium, sodium) or halogen (fluorine, chlorine) are present in various substances and indeed play significant roles in our life. Although atomic behaviours of these elements are often a key to resolve chemical or biological activities, they are hardly visible in transmission electron microscope because of their smaller scattering power and higher knock-on probability. Here we propose a concept for detecting light atoms encaged in a nanospace by means of electron energy loss spectroscopy using inelastically scattered electrons. In this method, we demonstrate the single-atom detection of lithium, fluorine, sodium and chlorine with near-atomic precision, which is limited by the incident probe size, signal delocalization and atomic movement in nanospace. Moreover, chemical shifts of lithium K-edge have been successfully identified with various atomic configurations in one-dimensional lithium compounds.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8943 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms8943

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8943

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().