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Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) has been proven to be a powerful tool for the study of microstructure and morphology with subnanometer resolution. Furthermore, a STEM paired with electron energy loss spectroscopy can provide useful information on the specimen elementary composition. However, these techniques are normally used with high electron beam voltage (80–200 keV) which induce knock-on beam damage into low Z materials. This becomes problematic when the microstructure of a low z material such as a lithium ion battery (LIB) is observed since the change into the material cause by the beam damage is close to the changes cause by the use of batteries during cycling.

To prevent beam damage such as knock-on damage, it is well known that the beam energy needs to be below the energy threshold of atomic displacement.[1, 2] Computational calculation such as density …