Inorganic transmission electron microscopy

The present volume contains the lectures given during this ASI and covers almost all theoretical and practical aspects of advanced transmission electron microscopy techniques and crystallographic methods that are relevant for determining structures of organic and inorganic materials. Moreover a number of extended abstracts on the presented posters during this ASI have been added to this volume. 

A mineral is a naturally occurring, crystalline inorganic compound with a specific chemical composition and crystal structure. Minerals are commonly named to honor a person, to indicate the geographic area where the mineral was discovered, or to highlight some distinctive chemical, crystallographic, or physical characteristic of the substance. Each mineral sample has some obvious properties color, shape, texture, and perhaps odor or taste. However, to determine the precise composition and crystal structure necessary to accurately identify the species, one or several of the following techniques must be employed optical, x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and diffraction, and chemical and spectral analyses. 

The calcined samples are investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) in a Philips EM 420 instrument operated at 120 kV. The specimens are deposited on a copper grid coated with a carbon film. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) has been carried out at the Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, with a Philips CM20-ST microscope (accelerating voltage 300 kV). 

Ag2S was also effectively stabilized by cysteinyl ligands. These clusters are synthesized using a molar ratio of 2 1 cysteine silver ions upon which stoichiometric amounts of inorganic sulfide were added to nucleate the nanoparticle, with subsequent size-selective precipitation. The resultant nanoparticles had an absorbance shoulder at 300 nm. Further analysis using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) revealed a particle size of approximately 9.00 2.25 run in diameter. Selected area electron diffraction (SAED) analysis also demonstrates the highly crystalline natme of the product. ... 

In the section that follows only a few systems are described. The examples chosen have been selected to illustrate the wide range of inorganic materials which show this type of behaviour and have been taken exclusively from the recent literature. Many of these findings have been the result of the application of transmission electron microscopy to mineral and synthetic inorganic specimens, and it is this technique which is most widely quoted in the survey which follows. 

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