A fast beam switch for controlling the intensity in electron energy loss spectrometry

The fast deflection system described in this paper is suitable for controlling the intensity reaching the detector of a magnetic sector electron spectrometer mounted below an analytical transmission electron microscope. Amongst other things, this allows the low loss region of the spectrum to be recorded with the same electron probe conditions used to record core losses, something that is essential for high spatial resolution studies. The plate assembly restricts the width of the electron distribution reaching the viewing screen to a strip similar to 17 mm wide in the direction approximately normal to the dispersion direction of the spectrometer. The resulting deflection has no detectable effect on the FWHM of the zero-loss peak for exposure times as short as 1 mus. At incident energies up to 300 keV, positioning the deflection plates in the 35 mm camera port above the viewing chamber allows voltages of < +/- 3 kV to deflect the electrons out of the spectrometer and beyond the edge of the annular detector. When the deflection is switched on, the electrons are deflected out of the spectrometer in much less than 40 ns and when the deflection is switched off, the electrons return to within 10 mum of the undeflected position within 100 ns. Thus, even at an exposure time of 30 mus, the smallest time likely to be used in practice with a GATAN 666 spectrometer, <1% of the signal in the spectrum is from electrons whose scattering conditions differ from those in the undeflected position. The performance of the deflection system is such that it will also be suitable for use with the new and much faster GATAN ENFINA spectrometer system. At incident energies up to 200 keV and possibly up to 300 keV, deflection voltages of < +/- 3 kV are sufficient to deflect the electrons off a 1 k x 1 k charge coupled device (CCD) camera placed below the photographic camera. Thus the deflection system can be used as a very fast, non-mechanical shutter for such a CCD camera. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.