Exploring different inelastic projection mechanisms for electron tomography

Several different projection mechanisms that all make use of inelastically scattered electrons are used for electron tomography. The advantages and the disadvantages of these methods are compared to HAADF–STEM tomography, which is considered as the standard electron tomography technique in materials science. The different inelastic setups used are energy filtered transmission electron microscopy (EFTEM), thickness mapping based on the log-ratio method and bulk plasmon mapping. We present a comparison that can be used to select the best inelastic signal for tomography, depending on different parameters such as the beam stability and nature of the sample. The appropriate signal will obviously also depend on the exact information which is requested.