Vanadium carbide was purchased as powder at Aldrich with a 99.9% pure. Sample was prepared in the standard method for powder observation in a TEM .EELS experiments were carried out in a Phillips CM 200 STEM equipped with a Gatan 766 PEELS spectrometer. Experimental conditions for acquiring were the follows: a spot size of 500 nm, a chamber length of 400 mm and a detector aperture of 3 mm using a energy dispersion of 0.3 eV/channel with a beam energy of 200 KeV. Acquisition time was around 10 mn. taking an average of 100 spectra.

All the EELS spectra were corrected for background subtraction and multiple scattering deconvolution, before the fine structure analysis. The fine structure range was about 200 eV beyond the C-K edge located at energy loss of 283.8 eV and respect to the VL23-edge located at a energy loss of 513 eV.