Dave Mitchell's DigitalMicrograph™ Scripting Website

Function

A suite of scripts designed for acquiring, processing and analysing EELS spectra.

Version

version:20120930, v2.0

Author

D. R. G. Mitchell and B. Schaffer

Acknowledgements

Comments

This suite of software contains 20 different EELS Tools. These include tools for acquiring spectra from energy filters, methods for data averaging which preserve energy resolution, methods for analysing multiple spectra simultaneously, spectral formatting and analysis tools, utilities for acquiring information from spectra and calculators for displaying EELS edges for all elements and computing mean free paths.

Two packages are included - an online package for DigitalMicrograph installations directly attached to TEM/Energy Filter systems and a similar package for offline systems, with the hardware-dependent tools omitted. A detailed manual provides instructions on installing and using the software.

System Requirements

Tested on GMS 1.83 and GMS 2.10. This version was updated to address bugs arising from the scripting changes in GMS 2.x. A couple of tools require that Gatan's EELS plugin be present. The EELSTools plugin can be installed without this functionality being present, but the particular tools will not work. The online package requires that an Energy FIlter be present. It can be installed without the filter being present, but the hardware dependent functions will report errors.

Known Issues

The Online package contains tools which will acquire spectral data from Gatan’s Imaging Filter (GIF) into 3D data cubes. This software has been tested on GIF 2001 era instruments. With newer generation GIFs some hardware differences exist, specifically, different ranges of dispersion and different entrance aperture sizes. The ‘Multiple EELS Acquisition’ script has been rewritten to deal with the different dispersions, although this has not been explicitly tested – we do not have access to such hardware. It is anticipated that all hardware dependent software should work correctly, regardless of the vintage of GIF you are using. One potential exception to this is the ‘Capture Filter Control Settings’ script. On newer generation GIFs, the aperture size displayed in the data file created with the above script, may differ from that in the Filter Control program. However, when this data file is used to restore a Filter Control setting, it should restore the aperture to the correct value ie it looks incorrect, but it actually works. If users do find issues with any of the tools, please let the authors know.

Supported

Yes

Included Files

Zipped archive containing: Online package for systems directly connected to TEM/Energy Filter; Offline package for systems not connected to hardware. (Install one or the other, but not both); Instruction manual; Uninstaller; Example Carbon Data Cube with which to experiment.

 

Source Code