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Electron Energy-Loss Spectroscopy in the Electron Microscope (Topics in Geobiology)

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For as long as I can remember, Ray Egerton has been at the forefront of electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) in the transmission electron microscope (TEM). For those who want to find out more about EELS and its ability to map composition at a nanometer scale (especially for low Z elements), this book is probably the best place to start. In addition to describing such instrumentation as magnetic prisms and lenses, the author provides a review of elastic and inelastic scattering theory. Inelastic scattering, as the key to understanding EELS, and the source of the features in the EELS spectrum, is broken down into plasmons (both bulk and surface) and the characteristic atomic excitations that lead to absorption edges. Bethe's theory of energy loss from characteristic atomic excitations is laid out in sufficient detail, as is the formulation of EELS spectra in terms of the complex dielectric constant. Inelastic scattering theory is, in turn, used by the author to calculate the spatial resolution of this technique as a function of the incident electron energy and the electron energy loss.

If you want to get a taste of what this book is like, I would suggest that you read Egerton's review article in Rep. Prog. Phys. 72 (2009) 016502 as well as his article in Ultramicroscopy 4 (1979) 169.