QUANTITATIVE CHEMICAL-PHASE ANALYSIS OF EFTEM ELEMENTAL MAPS USING SCATTER DIAGRAMS

Energy-filtered transmission electron microscope (EFTEM) images can yi eld elemental maps of very high lateral resolution (1-2 nm) in a short time (typically less than 3 min). Additionally, correlation technique s such as scatter diagrams yield information about the intensity relat ionships between the various elemental maps, thus leading to the calcu lation of chemical phase maps. The application of such techniques redu ces the amount of data (i.e. number of images) by compressing informat ion of different images into only a few. This makes interpretation a l ot easier and clearer, since information in chemical phase maps is res tricted to the chemical composition of the specimen. In this work we u sed a Gatan Imaging Filter (GIF) to acquire EFTEM images of a Ba-Nd-ti tanate specimen. The scatter diagram technique together with quantific ation procedures was then applied to these images in order to show the distribution of chemical phases within the specimen. First, we quanti fied the elemental maps using atomic ratio images. Then we applied the scatter diagram technique on the atomic ratio images and calculated c hemical phase maps. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved .