TY - GEN A1 - Hodoroaba, Vasile-Dan T1 - Improved Deposition of Nanoparticles vy Electrospray Analaysis with SEM/TEM and EDS N2 - Although there are many experimental techniques for measuring particle sizes and size distributions, electron microscopy (EM) is still considered as the gold standard in this field, especially when it comes to particle sizes in the nanorange (1 nm – 100 nm). Furthermore, high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) can be applied to individual nanoparticles. To be able to extract accurate information from the EM micrographs and EDS elemental maps that are representative for the material under investigation, one needs to assure the representativity of the particles as sampled on the substrate and their homogeneous spatial distribution, to avoid operator bias when selecting the imaged area. Furthermore, agglomeration should be avoided as far as possible. Several sample preparation techniques exist since a long time, the most common way being suspending the particles in a liquid and depositing them on the grid. However, this procedure includes the drying of larger solvent amounts on the substrate itself, which can affect the spatial distribution of the deposited particles. One possibility to overcome this problem is the use of an electrospray system, where the suspension of particles is sprayed onto the substrate in charged droplets that are so small that they either dry off on the substrate immediately without affecting the position of particles, or even already during their flight time to the substrate. No dedicated commercial instruments are available for the preparation of TEM grids yet, only electrostatic deposition of aerosols on TEM grids has been reported so far. To test the prototype and assess its performance, several materials have been sprayed onto TEM grids and the resulting particle distributions were compared to more traditional sample preparation strategies like the “drop on grid” method. Operation parameters such as the sample flow-rate, capillary – substrate distance, electric field strength and sampling period length have been optimised. It was found that the particles deposited by electrospray generally show a much more homogeneous spatial distribution on the substrate and a substantial increase of the number of single particles, which are much better suited to an automatic image evaluation procedure than the agglomerated particles observed otherwise. The applicability of the technique to a broad range of materials is demonstrated by various examples, but also the influence of the substrate, the choice of the particular TEM grid, on the obtained spatial particle distribution is assessed. T2 - EMAS 2017 - 15th European Workshop on MODERN DEVELOPMENTS AND APPLICATIONS IN MICROBEAM ANALYSIS and IUMAS-7 Meeting CY - Konstanz, Germany DA - 07.05.2017 KW - Electrospray deposition KW - TEM grids KW - Nanoparticles KW - Agglomeration PY - 2017 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-bam/frontdoor/index/index/docId/40257 AN - OPUS4-40257 AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany