Studies on polarization properties of scattered light from a random medium like biological tissue have received considerable attention because polarization can be used as an effective tool to discriminate against multiply scattered light (acting as a gating mechanism) and thus can facilitate high resolution imaging through tissue. Further, the polarization properties of scattered light from tissue contain wealth of morphological and functional information of potential biomedical importance. However, in a complex random medium like tissue, numerous complexities due to multiple scattering and simultaneous occurrences of many scattering and polarization events present formidable challenges both in terms of accurate measurements and in terms of analysis of the tissue polarimetry signal. Several studies have therefore been conducted in the recent past to develop appropriate measurement procedures, suitable light propagation models and polarimetry signal analysis methods to overcome these difficulties. In this review, we focus on some of the recent key developments in this area. Specifically, we describe variety of theoretical and experimental tools, illustrated with selected results, aimed at evaluating the prospect of turbid medium polarimetry for both biomedical imaging and diagnosis.

The Schrödinger equation is applied to the photon-electron interaction to give a unified picture of the ponderomotive refraction effect, Kapitza-Dirac diffraction as well as near field energy gain and loss processes. Analytical solutions are studied for simple cases and the potential use of these phenomena in applications of electron microscopy is discussed.

Recent pioneering experiments combining ultrafast lasers with electron-based technology demonstrated the possibility to obtain real-time information about chemical bonds and their dynamics during reactions and phase transformation. These techniques have been successfully applied to several states of matter including gases, liquids, solids and biological samples showing a unique versatility thanks to the high sensitivity of electrons to tiny amounts of material and their low radiation damage. A very powerful tool, the time-resolved Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), is capable of delivering information on the structure of ordered and disordered matter through diffraction and imaging, with a spatial resolution down to the atomic limit (10-10 m); the same apparatus can distinguish dynamical phenomena happening on the time-scales between fs and ms, with a dynamic range of 12 orders of magnitude. At the same time, spectroscopic information can be obtained from the loss of kinetic energy of electrons interacting with specimens in the range of interband transitions and plasmons in solids, or charge transfers in molecules, all the way up to the atomic core levels with the same time-resolution. In this contribution, we focus on the recent advances in fs Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (FEELS), discussing the main results and their implications for future studies.

Inelastic interaction and wave optics seem to be incompatible in that inelastic processes destroy coherence, which is the fundamental requirement for holography. In special experiments it is shown that energy transfer larger than some 10-15 eV undoubtedly destroys coherence of the inelastic electron with the elastic remainder. Consequently, the usual inelastic processes, such as phonon-, plasmon- or inner shell-excitations with energy transfer of several meV out to several 10 eV, certainly produce incoherence with the elastic ones. However, it turned out that within the inelastic wave, “newborn” by the inelastic process, there is a sufficiently wide area of coherence for generating “inelastic holograms”. This is exploited to create holograms with electrons scattered at surface-plasmons, which opens up quantum mechanical investigation of these inelastic processes.

A dedicated STEM developed for operation at primary energies from 200 keV to 40 keV and lower is described. It has a new cold field emission gun (CFEG) that gives a normalized brightness of 3 × 108 A/(m2 sr V), and excellent short-term and long-term stability. It includes two gun lenses (one electrostatic and one electromagnetic), a fast electrostatic beam blanker, three condenser lenses, a corrector of third- and fifth-order geometric aberrations, an objective lens with low aberration coefficients, a flexible set of projector lenses, an ultra-stable sample stage, and provision for storing up to five samples under high vacuum and loading them into the microscope’s objective lens under remote control. The microscope is enclosed in a magnetically and acoustically shielding enclosure, which allows it to operate at a high performance level even in non-optimal environments. It has reached 53 pm resolution at 200 keV and 123 pm at 40 keV, and an EELS energy resolution of 0.26 eV.

The structure of crystals can be described by defining size and shape of a unit cell and the positions of the atoms within it. Many materials, however, exhibit a glassy or amorphous structure. Such disordered structures are described by structure factors. These are usually determined by small angle scattering experiments. The angular distribution recorded in these experiments is related to the structure factor. In this work we present an alternative approach using elemental maps obtained in an energy filtering transmission electron microscope. In this way we can even obtain chemically resolved partial structure factors giving additional information on the specimen.

Colossal ionic conductivity was recently discovered in YSZ/SrTiO3 multilayers and was explained in terms of strain- and interface-enhanced disorder of the O sublattice. In the present paper we use a combination of scanning transmission electron microscopy and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) and theoretical EELS simulations to confirm the presence of a disordered YSZ O sublattice in coherent YSZ/SrTiO3 multilayers. O K-edge fine structure simulated for the strained disordered O sublattice phase of YSZ possesses blurred-out features compared to that of ordered cubic bulk YSZ, and experimental EELS fine structure taken from the strained YSZ of coherent YSZ/SrTiO3 thin films is similarly blurred out. Elemental mapping is shown to be capable of resolving ordered YSZ O sublattices. Elemental mapping of O in the coherent YSZ/STO multilayers is presented in which the O sublattice is seen to be clearly resolved in the STO but blurred out in the YSZ, indicating it to be disordered. In addition, we present imaging and EELS results which show that strained regions exist at the incoherent interfaces of YSZ islands in STO with blurred out fine structure, suggesting these incoherent regions may also support high ionic conductivities. Recently, Cavallaro et al. reported electronic conductivities in samples of incoherent disconnected islands embedded in STO that are similar to the islands described herein. The presence of a region of O depleted STO at the interface with incoherent YSZ islands is revealed by EELS elemental mapping, implying the n-type doping of STO/YSZ nanocomposites with disconnected incoherent YSZ islands.

Imaging and chemical analysis of individual metallofullerene molecules were successfully carried out without massive destruction using a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) operated at 30 kV. Electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) unambiguously identified the constituent atom of each metallofullerene molecule. The profile of EELS chemical map measured across the single atom provides a rough estimate of EELS signal delocalization, which is considerably reduced using accelerating voltage as low as 30 kV.

The electronic structure and the magnetic moment of metallic iron are strongly modified near the Fe(100)/Co(bcc) interface. This effect has been evaluated from the iron L2,3 energy loss near edge structure recorded for Fe/Co superlattices grown by molecular beam epitaxy with different periods. The interface-induced modification of the intensity ratio I(L3)/I(L2) which has been measured by electron energy loss spectroscopy is in good agreement with the enhancement of the magnetic moment calculated from first principles. This shows that the intensity ratio can be used to obtain information on magnetic moments at a nanometer scale in a transmission electron microscope.

In this work two aspects of momentum-dependent electron energy loss spectrometry are studied, both in the core-loss and in the low-loss region. In the case of core losses, we focus on the demonstration and the interpretation of an unexpected non-Lorentzian behavior in the angular part of the double-differential scattering cross-section. The silicon L3 edge is taken as an example. Using calculations we show that the non-Lorentzian behavior is due to a change in the wavefunction overlap between the initial and the final states. In the case of low losses, we first analyze the momentum-dependent loss functions of coinage metals Cu, Ag, and Au. We then demonstrate how advanced electronic structure calculations can be used to build simple models for the dielectric function that can then serve as a basis for the calculation of more complicated sample geometries.

Nanoparticles (NPs) have attracted a considerable interest in the last decades, owing to their remarkable physical and chemical properties. The most important characteristic of NPs is the size effect, that is, their properties differ from that of the corresponding bulk material. We will focus here on Electron Energy-Loss Spectroscopy (EELS) investigations of Gd2O3 NPs of different and controlled sizes. EELS spectra near the O-K edge of Gd2O3 were recorded and compared with feff8.2 ELNES simulations. The calculation of the EELS response from small particles by the feff code raises some particular problems which have been carefully examined and partially solved. The simulations are in fair agreement with experiment and reveal the existence of size effects.

We report on spatially resolved electron energy-loss spectroscopy studies of optical modes in individual star-shaped gold nanoparticles. We studied different morphologies, ranging from a spheroid to well-developed nanostars. For each shape, essentially two groups of modes are appearing: the first one is localized around the core of the nanostars and has an energy slightly less than the quasi-static dipolar mode of a gold sphere (about 2.2 eV); in the second group, the modes are localized at the end of the nanostar tips, with varying energies depending on the geometry of each tip and with energy down to 1.2 eV. The localization of the tip modes is interpreted with the help of boundary element methods simulations.