Electron vortex beams prepared by a spiral aperture with the goal to measure EMCD on ferromagnetic films via STEM

X-ray magnetic circular dichroism is a well established method to study element specific magnetic properties of a material, while electron magnetic circular dichroism (EMCD), which is the electron wave analogue to XMCD, is scarcely used today. Recently discovered electron vortex beams, that carry a discrete orbital angular momentum (OAM) L, are also predicted to reveal dichroic signals. Since electron beams can be easily focused down to sub-nanometer diameters, this novel technique promises the possibility to quantitatively determine local magnetic properties with unrivalled lateral resolution. As the spiralling wave front of the electron vortex beam has an azimutally growing phase shift of up to 2π and a phase singularity in its axial center, specially designed apertures are needed to generate such non-planar electron waves. We report on the preparation and successful implementation of spiral apertures into the condenser lens system of an aberration-corrected FEI Titan³ 80-300 transmission electron microscope (TEM). This setup allows to perform scanning TEM (STEM) with vortex beams carrying user-selected OAM. First experiments on the interaction of the vortex beam with a poly-crystalline sample are presented. Within the achieved signal to noise ratio no EMCD signal has been detected. This finding is supported by simulations of inelastic scattering of a beam generated by spiral aperture. - Highlights: • We show the implementation of a spiral aperture into a FEI Titan³ 80-300. • Experiments and simulations on the interaction of the vortex beam with a Ni sample are presented. • Both, simulations and experiments show no (or a not detectable small) EMCD signal. • The absence of an EMCD signal is explained by the superposition of different vortex states