Recent applications of high-energy-resolution STEM-EELS: from phonons and magnons to extra-terrestrial organic matter

A little over a decade after the first report of vibrational spectroscopy in the STEM, this informal seminar will illustrate the extremely wide impact high-energy-resolution STEM-EELS has had across numerous scientific fields. Beyond headline demonstrations of atomic-resolution phonon or magnon spectroscopy, which provide a unique tool to probe quantum matter and phenomena at device-relevant length-scales, these new instruments have also found cross-disciplinary applications in areas of research as varied as cosmochemistry (with nanoscale vibrational analysis of the molecular constitution of extraterrestrial organic matter in returned samples from JAXA’ Hayabusa2 or NASA’s OsirisREx missions), fundamental inorganic chemistry (with ‘extreme’ encapsulated nano-systems offering atomic-scale ‘test-tubes’ to study gas or molecular interactions a handful of one molecules at a time) or metallurgy with new insights provided into decades old unresolved debates, e.g. concerning heterogeneous nucleation in metallic alloys). With further instrumentation developments on the horizon such as new sample stages reaching temperatures as low as a few K, there is now truly a synchrotron in our microscopes!