INTERFERENCE EXPERIMENTS WITH ENERGY-FILTERED ELECTRONS

Interference of purely inelastically scattered electrons in the Gaussi an image plane of an energy-filtering TEM (EFTEM) provides a means to measure the localisation of a specific inelastic scattering process, A lthough, the initial degree of angular coherence given by the illumina tion angle of the electron source is reduced by the inelastic scatteri ng event, interference of single plasmon scattered electrons was obser ved in a Zeiss EM 912 OMEGA. The lower limit of the localisation of si ngle plasmon scattering in an aluminium single crystal was measured in this experiment to be 16 nm. Present experimental restrictions are th e limited degree of coherence of the LaB6 electron source and the fixe d position of the Mollenstedt-biprism along the beam of the Zeiss EM 9 12 OMEGA electron microscope.