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Letter 16036
Sample prep for SEM
[Idaho]
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My company has recently upgraded our SEM, and we wish to start
looking at the pores of an anodized coating (H2S04). To this point we
have had very little success. Can someone reccomend proper sample
preparation? The SEM is capable of 100k magnification, so we believe
that we should be able to look at the porous structure of the
coating.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
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Marc Green
anodizer - Boise, ID, USA
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First of two simultaneous responses -- ++
I'm not sure about an anodized surface, but when I was playing
with SEM and circuit boards I always gold sputtered them.
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James Totter,
CEF
- Tallahassee, FL
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Second of two simultaneous responses -- ++
Marc, are you using an environmental SEM (one of those you can
backfill with a low pressure of gas to bleed off charge, then use
backscatter imaging) or are you coating with gold? I'd suspect the
sputter coating with gold would be a better method, as secondary
imaging has a lot more resolution than backscatter.
If you want to send me a sample, I'll look at it in our SEM (Amray
3200, with environmental mode- but we've kept our sputter coater) and
e-mail you some photos. [Contact information has been sent in
private.]

Lee Gearhart
- East Aurora, NY
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