Article abstract
Nature Chemistry 1, 415 - 418 (2009)
Published online: 5 July 2009 | doi:10.1038/nchem.282
Subject Categories: Analytical chemistry | General chemistry
Visualizing and identifying single atoms using electron energy-loss spectroscopy with low accelerating voltage
Kazu Suenaga1, Yuta Sato1, Zheng Liu1, Hiromichi Kataura1, Toshiya Okazaki1, Koji Kimoto2, Hidetaka Sawada3, Takeo Sasaki3, Kazuya Omoto3, Takeshi Tomita3, Toshikatsu Kaneyama3 & Yukihito Kondo3
Abstract
Visualizing atoms and discriminating between those of different elements is a goal in many analytical techniques. The use of electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) in such single-atom analyses is hampered by an inherent difficulty related to the damage caused to specimens by incident electrons. Here, we demonstrate the successful EELS single-atom spectroscopy of various metallofullerene-doped single-wall nanotubes (known as peapods) without massive structural destruction. This is achieved by using an incident electron probe with a low accelerating voltage (60 kV). Single calcium atoms inside the peapods were unambiguously identified for the first time using EELS. Elemental analyses of lanthanum, cerium and erbium atoms were also demonstrated, which shows that single atoms with adjacent atomic numbers can be successfully discriminated with this technique.
- National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba 305-8565, Japan
- National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba 305-0044, Japan
- JEOL Ltd, 3-1-2 Musashino, Akishima, Tokyo 196-8558, Japan
Correspondence to: Kazu Suenaga1 e-mail: suenaga-kazu@aist.go.jp
