Electron-beam broadening in amorphous carbon films in low-energy scanning transmission electron microscopy

Highlights: • Electron beam broadening in low-energy scanning transmission electron microscopy. • Measurement based on multi-segmented STEM detector. • Results for thin amorphous carbon film with known thicknesses. • Quantitative description of experimental data with analytical model from literature. - Abstract: Resolution in scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) is ultimately limited by the diameter of the electron beam. The electron beam diameter is not only determined by the properties of the condenser lens system but also by electron scattering in the specimen which leads to electron-beam broadening and degradation of the resolution with increasing specimen thickness. In this work we introduce a new method to measure electron-beam broadening which is based on STEM imaging with a multi-segmented STEM detector. We focus on STEM at low electron energies between 10 and 30 keV and use an amorphous carbon film with known thickness as test object. The experimental results are compared with calculated beam diameters using different analytical models and Monte-Carlo simulations. We find excellent agreement of the experimental data with the recently published model by Gauvin and Rudinsky [1] for small t/λ_el (thickness to elastic mean free path) values which are considered in our study.