Publication detail

Influence of experimental conditions on localized surface plasmon resonances measurement by electron energy loss spectroscopy

HORÁK, M. ŠIKOLA, T.

Original Title

Influence of experimental conditions on localized surface plasmon resonances measurement by electron energy loss spectroscopy

Type

journal article in Web of Science

Language

English

Original Abstract

Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) combined with electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) has become a standard technique to map localized surface plasmon resonances with a nanometer spatial and a sufficient energy resolution over the last 15 years. However, no experimental work discussing the influence of experimental conditions during the measurement has been published up to now. We present an experimental study of the influence of the primary beam energy and the collection semi-angle on the plasmon resonances measurement by STEM-EELS. To explore the influence of these two experimental parameters we study a series of gold rods and gold bow-tie and diabolo antennas. We discuss the impact on experimental characteristics which are important for successful detection of the plasmon peak in EELS, namely: the intensity of plasmonic signal, the signal to background ratio, and the signal to zero-loss peak ratio. We found that the primary beam energy should be high enough to suppress the scattering in the sample and at the same time should be low enough to avoid the appearance of relativistic effects. Consequently, the best results are obtained using a medium primary beam energy, in our case 120 keV, and an arbitrary collection semi-angle, as it is not a critical parameter at this primary beam energy. Our instructive overview will help microscopists in the field of plasmonics to arrange their experiments.

Keywords

EELS; Electron energy loss spectroscopy; Localized surface plasmon resonance; Primary beam energy; Collection semi-angle

Authors

HORÁK, M.; ŠIKOLA, T.

Released

1. 9. 2020

Publisher

Elsevier

ISBN

0304-3991

Periodical

Ultramicroscopy

Year of study

216

Number

1

State

Kingdom of the Netherlands

Pages from

1

Pages to

9

Pages count

9

URL

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304399120300504

Full text in the Digital Library

http://hdl.handle.net/11012/195270

BibTex

@article{BUT165436,
  author="Michal {Horák} and Tomáš {Šikola}",
  title="Influence of experimental conditions on localized surface plasmon resonances measurement by electron energy loss spectroscopy",
  journal="Ultramicroscopy",
  year="2020",
  volume="216",
  number="1",
  pages="1--9",
  doi="10.1016/j.ultramic.2020.113044",
  issn="0304-3991",
  url="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304399120300504"
}

Documents

2020 Ultramic (Horák) preprint.pdf