AFM, SEM, and TEM

Global planeness and large scale scratches are usually evaluated by HDI instruments as shown in Fig. 3(a) [8], which is a surface reflectance analyzer to measure flatness, waviness, roughness of a surface, and observe scratches (Fig. 3(h)), pits (Fig. 3(c)), particles (Fig. 3(d)) on a global surface. These surface defects can also be observed by SEM, TEM, and AFM. Shapes of slurry particles can be observed by SEM and TEM, and their movement in liquid by the fluorometry technique as shown in Chapter2. 

The solid surfaces and interfaces are investigated using surface profiler or imaging equipments such as scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and TEM in order to quantity the... 

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was first applied to investigate the polymer surfaces in 1988 shortly after its invention [23]. Today, studies by AFM range from simple visualization of morphology to more advanced examination of polymer structure and properties at the nanometer scale. AFM gives three-dimensional pictures of the surfaces, while other methods, SEM and TEM, do not. AFM is frequently applied to polymer surfaces, principally to reveal morphology, nanostructure, chain packing, conformation, pore size, and pore size distribution at the surface. 

This section provides brief insights on some of the most important characterization techniques used for CNTs and other nanocarbons in addition to microscopy-related (i.e. SEM, TEM, AFM, STM) and diffraction (i.e. X-ray, electron) techniques. 

The most popular tools for the visualization of engineered nanoparticles are electron and scanning probe microscopes. The visualization, the state of aggregation, dispersion sorption, size, structure, and shape can be observed by means of atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Analytical tools (mostly spectroscopic) can be coupled to... 

Lower et al. (1998b) can shed more light on this phenomenon. They again used AFM, SEM, TEM, SEM-EDS, electron diffraction, and XRD to study the reactions between 0.5 and 500 mg/L of Pb with hydroxyapatite at pH 6 and a reaction temperature of 22 °C. A commercial hydroxyapatite was used at sorbent concentrations of 0.5 g/L. Reactions were observed over a 2 h period. At high initial Pb concentrations, Pb solution concentrations dropped from 500 mg/L to <100 mg/L. At concentrations of 0.5-100 mg Pb/L, after reaction, Pb levels dropped to less than 15 pg/L. In both cases, hydroxyapatite dissolved and hydroxypyromorphite formed. The authors applied some nucleation and crystal growth theory developed... 

The oldest microscopy technique for materials analysis was optical microscopy. Even to this day, for feature sizes above 1 pm, this is one of the most popular tools. For smaller features, electron microscopy techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) are the tools of choice. A third family of microscopy includes scanning probe tools such as scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). In these relatively recent techniques, sample preparation concerns are of minor importance compared to other problems, such as vibration isolation and processing of atomically sharp probes. Therefore, the latter techniques are not discussed here. This chapter is aimed at introducing the user to general specimen preparation steps involved in optical and electron microscopy [3 7], which to date are the most common... 

Electron microscopy provides an image of the particles to be measured. In particular, SEM is used for vacuum dried nanoparticles that are coated with a conductive carbon-gold layer for analysis and TEM is used to determine the size, shape, and inner core structure of the particles. TEM in combination with freeze-fracture procedures differentiates between nanocapsules, nanospheres, and emulsion droplets. AFM is an advanced microscopic technique and its images can be obtained in aqueous medium. AFM images, nowadays are a powerful support for the investigation of nanoparticles in biological media. 

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