Linear and Chiral Dichroism in the Electron Microscope

The growing interest in the miniaturization of magnetic storage media and the quest for novel spintronics applications rely on element specific detection of spin and orbital magnetic moments in a solid. The most sophisticated technique to reach this aim has been XMCD (X-ray magnetic circular dichroism), largely used in synchrotron beam lines. The spatial resolution limit of this technique is of the order of 20 - 50 nm. This poses a sensible limit for the study of nanostructured devices. This book describes EMCD (energy loss magnetic chiral dichroism), a phenomenon in energy loss spectroscopy d