Unmixing noisy co-registered spectrum images of multicomponent nanostructures

Analytical electron microscopy plays a key role in the development of novel nanomaterials. Electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) datasets are typically processed to isolate the background-subtracted elemental signal. Multivariate tools have emerged as powerful methods to blindly map the components, which addresses some of the shortcomings of the traditional methods. Here, we demonstrate the superior performance of a new multivariate optimization method using a challenging EELS and EDX dataset. The dataset was recorded from a spectrum image P-type metal-oxide-semiconductor stack with 7 components exhibiting heavy spectral overlap and a low signal-to-noise ratio. Compared to peak integration, independent component analysis, Baysian Linear Unmixing and Non-negative matrix factorization, the method proposed was the only one to identify the EELS spectra of all 7 components with the corresponding abundance profiles. Using the abundance of each component, it was possible to retrieve the EDX spectra of all the components, which were otherwise impossible to isolate, regardless of the method used. We expect that this robust method will bring a significant improvement for the chemical analysis of nanomaterials, especially for weak signals, dose-sensitive specimen or signals suffering heavy spectral overlap.