Determination of electron inelastic mean free path of three transition metals from reflection electron energy loss spectroscopy spectrum measurement data

Abstract

The energy loss functions (ELFs) of three transition metals (Cr, Co and Pd) have been derived from reflection electron energy loss spectroscopy spectrum with a theoretical analysis of the measured data [Xu et al., J. Appl. Phys. 123, 043306 (2018)]. In this work, we update our previous ELFs in a wider photon energy region (0–200 eV) with a better accuracy, which is verified by sum rules and a root-mean-square deviation. The electron inelastic mean free paths (IMFPs) of Cr, Co and Pd have been calculated with the obtained ELFs by adopting a dielectric response theory. We employ both the single-pole approximation and full Penn algorithm for the calculation of IMFPs, and the calculated results are compared with other references.