The world of environmental microscopy provides the possibility to study and analyze transformations and reactions during realistic conditions to understand the processes better. We report on the design and development of a metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) system integrated with an environmental transmission electron microscope intended for real-time investigations of crystal growth. We demonstrate methods for achieving a wide range of precisely controlled concentrations of precursor gas at the sample, as well as for calibrating the sample partial pressure using the pressure measured elsewhere in the microscope column. The influences of elevated temperature and reactive gas within the pole-piece gap are evaluated with respect to imaging and spectroscopy. We show that X-ray energy-dispersive spectroscopy can be strongly affected by temperatures beyond 500$^{\circ }$C, while the spatial resolution is largely unaffected by heat and microscope pressure for the relevant conditions. Finally, the influence of the electron beam on the investigated processes is discussed. With this work, we aim to provide crucial input in the development of advanced in situ electron microscopy systems for studies of complex reactions in real time under realistic conditions, for instance as used during formation of semiconductor crystals.

Monte Carlo simulations are commonly used in elemental quantification using energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). Here, the Monte Carlo program MC X-ray was incorporated into the image processing software Dragonfly by Object Research Systems (ORS) as a simulation library. The simulation program has been transformed into a complete microscope simulator where the tools of Dragonfly allow complex voxel-based geometries to be constructed, and the electron beam and detectors can be freely placed inside the 3D space. Computation times of simulations have been improved drastically through new data structures and parallelization. Simulations of backscattered electron imaging and EDS mapping are presented here to demonstrate the capabilities of this new library.

iSpectra is an open source and system-independent toolbox for the analysis of spectral images (SIs) recorded on energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) systems attached to scanning electron microscopes (SEMs). The aim of iSpectra is to assign pixels with similar spectral content to phases, accompanied by cumulative phase spectra with superior counting statistics for quantification. Pixel-to-phase assignment starts with a threshold-based pre-sorting of spectra to create groups of pixels with identical elemental budgets, similar to a method described by van Hoek (2014). Subsequent merging of groups and re-assignments of pixels using elemental or principle component histogram plots enables the user to generate chemically and texturally plausible phase maps. A variety of standard image processing algorithms can be applied to groups of pixels to optimize pixel-to-phase assignments, such as morphology operations to account for overlapping excitation volumes over pixels located at phase boundaries. iSpectra supports batch processing and allows pixel-to-phase assignments to be applied to an unlimited amount of SIs, thus enabling phase mapping of large area samples like petrographic thin sections.

As part of the Microbeam Analysis Society (MAS) symposium marking 30 years of energy-dispersive spectrometry (EDS), this article reviews many innovations in the field over those years. Innovations that added a capability previously not available to the microanalyst are chosen for further description. Included are innovations in both X-ray microanalysis and digital imaging using the EDS analyzer.