Transmission Electron Microscopy

[Telemachus]

I'm looking for a quick and well synthetized reference to the TEM technique. I'm writing a monography, we used TEM on a sample (just sended it to the lab, I dind't do the work). I don't have any reference, and I wanted to give a kind of introduction in the monography to TEM. I don't want a whole book on the stuff, I need the basics, some equations, and some cualitative explanation of the Transmission Electron Microscope, the components of it, how it works, and how the samples have to be prepared.

Anybody has any quick and solid reference to TEM? I'm not interested on the details on crystallography. The samples were nanoparticles, we just used the microscope to see the size of the nanoparticles, we didn't do any crystallography. So if it can be avoided it would be great that way.

Thanks in advance.

(I didn't know where to post this topic, if this is not the proper place, please move it)

 

[copper-head]

Look, this is a very broad subject. If you are simply looking for a quick, wide-view of what Transmission electron Microscopy can do, the Wikipedia page is pretty detailed in that regard. I guess I'm trying to say that a TEM image can inform you about a broad range of features in the sample, you'll have to be more specific: are you looking for shape?size?structure? all...

 

[Telemachus]

Just shape and size of the nanoparticles. Thanks for your answer :)

 

[copper-head]

Ok. Simple enough. Here's what I would do: If this is not a novel material, i.e. someone has done this before (reported in literature), compare the images they got with what you had for consistency. TEM devices allow you to add a scale to your images, so you can get an idea of the size as your are viewing the images. Now if your material is a breakthrough in materials and has not been investigated previously, you might have to "describe" the shape and report the size of particles as you get them. My advice is to try to get images from various areas of your sample to get a more un-biased view of the morphology.
Good luck

 

[Telemachus]

Thank you, but what I was actually looking for is something more general. The characterization of nanoparticles has been already done, I just wanted to write some general lines on the theory behind the TEM for the monography.