Thermal diffuse scattering in high-resolution electron holography

Abstract

A theory for wave function simulations with inclusion of thermal diffuse scattering (TDS) in electron holography is outlined. The inelastic thermal diffuse scattered electrons do not contribute to the sidebands but introduce an absorption factor in the simulated elastic wave. The TDS absorption effects are significant in the simulated amplitude but not in the phase and become important only when the image resolution approaches atomic level (< 1.6 Å). Valence, single electron and even phonon inelastically scattered electrons do not affect the sidebands of the off-axis holograms, thus the reconstructed wave function from a hologram is an essentially zero-loss, energy-filtered image of the specimen. In contrast, inelastically scattered electrons including the TDS electrons do contribute to conventional high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) images. This simply means that quantitative analysis of electron holograms may be easier than the analysis of HRTEM images.