Title

High Contrast Hollow-Cone Dark Field Transmission Electron Microscopy For Nanocrystalline Grain Size Quantification

Keywords

Grain size quantification; Hollow-cone dark field; Nanocrystalline; TEM

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. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Publication Date

4-1-2010

Publication Title

Micron

Volume

41

Issue

3

Number of Pages

177-182

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micron.2009.11.008

Socpus ID

75949084442 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/75949084442

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS