Streamlining the measurement of phonon dispersion

As the interest in renewable energy and energy-efficient devices continues to grow, so has the scientific community’s interest in discovering and designing new materials with desirable physical properties that could be used in solar cells or energy storage devices. A key tool in this work is High Resolution Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (HREELS), which involves exposing a material to a beam of electrons of known kinetic energy. While the electrons lose energy when they bounce off atoms in the surface of the material, that energy loss can be measured and used to make important determinations about the material.