Kociak M, Zagonel L F
Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris-SudParis-Sud, CNRS-UMR 8502, Orsay 91405, France.
"Gleb Wataghin" Institute of Physics University of Campinas - UNICAMP, 13083-859 Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil.
Ultramicroscopy. 2017 Mar;174:50-69. doi: 10.1016/j.ultramic.2016.11.018. Epub 2016 Dec 19.
Cathodoluminescence (CL) is a powerful tool for the investigation of optical properties of materials. In recent years, its combination with scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) has demonstrated great success in unveiling new physics in the field of plasmonics and quantum emitters. Most of these results were not imaginable even twenty years ago, due to conceptual and technical limitations. The purpose of this review is to present the recent advances that broke these limitations, and the new possibilities offered by the modern STEM-CL technique. We first introduce the different STEM-CL operating modes and the technical specificities in STEM-CL instrumentation. Two main classes of optical excitations, namely the coherent one (typically plasmons) and the incoherent one (typically light emission from quantum emitters) are investigated with STEM-CL. For these two main classes, we describe both the physics of light production under electron beam irradiation and the physical basis for interpreting STEM-CL experiments. We then compare STEM-CL with its better known sister techniques: scanning electron microscope CL, photoluminescence, and electron energy-loss spectroscopy. We finish by comprehensively reviewing recent STEM-CL applications.
阴极发光（CL）是研究材料光学性质的一种强大工具。近年来，它与扫描透射电子显微镜（STEM）相结合，在揭示等离激元学和量子发射体领域的新物理现象方面取得了巨大成功。由于概念和技术上的限制，即使在二十年前，这些成果中的大多数也是无法想象的。本综述的目的是介绍突破这些限制的最新进展，以及现代STEM-CL技术带来的新可能性。我们首先介绍不同的STEM-CL操作模式以及STEM-CL仪器的技术特性。利用STEM-CL研究了两类主要的光学激发，即相干激发（通常是等离激元）和非相干激发（通常是量子发射体的发光）。对于这两类主要激发，我们既描述了电子束辐照下的发光物理过程，也阐述了解释STEM-CL实验的物理基础。然后，我们将STEM-CL与其更为人熟知的姊妹技术：扫描电子显微镜CL、光致发光和电子能量损失谱进行比较。最后，我们全面综述了STEM-CL的近期应用。
