Liu Tong, Jin Hongyan, Xu Leilei, Huang Zengli, Chen Haijun, Niu Mutong, Ding Yanli, Ma Yao, Ding Sunan
Vacuum Interconnected Nanotech Workstation (Nano-X), Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics (SINANO), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Suzhou, 215123, China.
Suzhou Institute of Product Quality Supervision and Inspection, Suzhou, 215128, China.
Micron. 2021 Apr;143:103030. doi: 10.1016/j.micron.2021.103030. Epub 2021 Feb 5.
A TEM sample preparation technique for micrometer-sized powder particles in the 1-10 μm size range is proposed, using a focused ion beam (FIB) system. It is useful for characterizing elemental distributions across an entire cross-section of a particle. It is a simple and universal method without using any embedding agent, enabling the powder particles with different size, shape or orientation to be easily selected based on the SEM observations. The suitable particle is covered with Pt coating layers through an ion-beam-assisted deposition. The Pt coating layers provide sufficient support for the TEM lamella. A small piece of tungsten needle is used as a support under the particle by taking a series of operations using a micromanipulator. The particle can be precisely thinned by the ion beam to be suitable for both TEM observation and EDX elemental mapping. This novel technique reduces the TEM sample preparation time to a few hours, allowing much higher efficiency compared to complicated and time-consuming embedding methods.
提出了一种使用聚焦离子束（FIB）系统制备1-10μm尺寸范围内微米级粉末颗粒的透射电子显微镜（TEM）样品的技术。它有助于表征颗粒整个横截面的元素分布。这是一种简单通用的方法，无需使用任何包埋剂，能够根据扫描电子显微镜（SEM）观察结果轻松选择不同尺寸、形状或取向的粉末颗粒。通过离子束辅助沉积在合适的颗粒上覆盖铂涂层。铂涂层为TEM薄片提供了足够的支撑。通过使用微操作器进行一系列操作，在颗粒下方使用一小片钨针作为支撑。颗粒可以通过离子束精确减薄，以适合TEM观察和能谱仪（EDX）元素映射。这种新技术将TEM样品制备时间缩短至几小时，与复杂且耗时的包埋方法相比，效率大大提高。
