Quantitative Characterization of Nanostructured Thin Films
Nanomaterials are usually investigated in the Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM). However, it is possible to characterize nanomaterials quantitatively by benifiting from the large field of view of the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The on-axis TKD technique was developed to this aim; it is now a well established SEM-based method producing orientation distribution measurement at the nanoscale using EBSD hardware. In this application example, the orientation distribution of gold and platinum thin films were measured with e-Flash FS detector retroffited with OPTIMUS TKD head in a FEG-SEM. High speed TKD measurement are achieved at low probe current (<3 nA) allowing to overcome beam drift and achieve ultra high spatial resolution: in 20 minutes over 1000 grains were measured with the smallest grain size being 20 nm and ultrafine features such as twin boundaries were resolved (3nm).
