Contamination and the quantitative exploitation of EELS low-loss experiments

Quantitative exploitation of the low-loss domain of electron energy loss spectra is based on an accurate determination of the corresponding signal intensity profile. This signal can be erroneous and contains artefacts as a result of sample contamination in the microscope, for example. The consequences of contamination on the signal intensity of the low-loss spectra are discussed. In the case of a carbonaceous contamination, a simple additional spurious signal can be considered, as has been demonstrated in the case of a Si single crystal, a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) and a strontium titanate single crystal (SrTiO3). The linear variation of the rate of contamination with time allows the implementation of a simple method based on the subtraction of the spurious signal in order to correct for the contamination effect. The relative errors induced by the carbonaceous contamination on the determination of the optical properties of SrTiO3 are estimated.