The Use of Spraying Methods and of Volatile Suspending Media in the Preparation of Specimens for Electron Microscopy

作者：Robert C. Backus, Robley C. Williams · 发表于：Journal of Applied Physics · 年份：1950 · DOI：10.1063/1.1699411 · 被引用次数：201 · 研究领域：Electron and X-Ray Spectroscopy Techniques、Nuclear Physics and Applications、Hydrogen embrittlement and corrosion behaviors in metals

Developments have been made in the use of spraying methods in the preparation of specimens for examination in the electron microscope. At the same time, two wholly volatile diluents, containing electrolytes and adjusted to normal pH, have been developed for use in forming the spray drops. The use of volatile electrolytes makes it unnecessary to wash the specimen after the droplet patterns have been formed on the specimen screens. There are several qualitative and quantitative uses and advantages of the spray technique as described. The qualitative ones are these: (1) the brief drying time of the droplets helps to preserve the shapes of particles upon drying, and also allows studies to be made of rapidly reacting systems; (2) since the drop patterns are reproducibly representative samples of the suspension under investigation, qualitative assays of the particulate composition of the suspension can be made, and a comparison of the particulate composition of two closely similar suspensions can be made under ideal control conditions; (3) the droplet patterns are discretely bounded by blank areas of substrate film, and this fact makes practicable the detection of small and subtle differences between the fine structure of the specimen material and that of the substrate. The quantitative uses of the spray technique are: (1) by use of reference particles of known numbers in a suspension it is readily possible to determine the volumes of droplets issuing from a spray-making device; (2...