ABSTRACT
Cathodoluminescence (CL) techniques based on scanning electron microscopy or scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) have been applied to study, e.g., localized surface plasmon radiation from particles or holes, surface plasmon polariton (SPP) propagation, and dispersion relation of SPP on plasmonic crystals. This chapter focuses on the STEM-CL technique. It shows application examples of CL measurement on metallic nanoparticles and compares them with the theory of CL image formation. The application of the STEM-CL method to the representative nanostructures in plasmonics, such as metal nanoparticles and plasmonic crystals, has been demonstrated, and the reader can understand how to use this method and what kind of information can be obtained. The process of CL has been theoretically treated as radiation losses by Garcia de Abajo and M. Kociak, and it was shown that the CL intensity corresponds to the electromagnetic local density of state for disk structures.
