Title

High contrast hollow-cone dark field transmission electron microscopy for nanocrystalline grain size quantification

Authors

Authors

B. Yao; T. Sun; A. Warren; H. Heinrich; K. Barmak;K. R. Coffey

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

Micron

Keywords

Hollow-cone dark field; Nanocrystalline; Grain size quantification; TEM; BACK-ETCH METHOD; FILMS; TEM; Microscopy

Abstract

In this paper, we describe hollow-cone dark field (HCDF) transmission electron microscopy (TEM) imaging, with a slightly convergent beam, as an improved technique that is suitable to form high contrast micrographs for nanocrystalline grain size quantification. We also examine the various factors that influence the HCDF TEM image quality, including the conditions of microscopy (alignment, focus and objective aperture size), the properties of the materials imaged (e.g., atomic number, strain, defects), and the characteristics of the TEM sample itself (e.g., thickness, ion milling artifacts). Sample preparation was found to be critical and an initial thinning by wet etching of the substrate (for thin film samples) or tripod polishing (for bulk samples), followed by low-angle ion milling was found to be the preferred approach for preparing high-quality electron transparent samples for HCDF imaging. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Journal Title

Micron

Volume

41

Issue/Number

3

Publication Date

1-1-2010

Document Type

Review

Language

English

First Page

177

Last Page

182

WOS Identifier

WOS:000275344900001

ISSN

0968-4328

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