Discrimination of heavy and light elements in a specimen by use of scanning transmission electron microscopy

Heavier elements have a larger scattering cross-section for elastically scattered electrons than lighter ones. Furthermore, the maximum number of scattered electrons is at higher scattering angles for heavier atoms. These differences can be used, in principle, to distinguish heavy and light elements from each other in dark field Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy (STEM). We have achieved such discrimination in practice by collecting the electrons in a STEM experiment at two different angles. The information about the elemental composition that these two images together contain is visualized by forming linear combinations of the images which are specific for light and heavy elementsrrespectively. The results are demonstrated for a specimen consisting of platinum grains on a holey carbon film and for granulocytes stained with osmium tetroxide.