AFM Combined with TEM and SEM: Complete Imaging of Nanometre-Sized Nanostructured Materials

Carmen Serra, Miguel A. Correa-Duarte, Jesús Méndez-Fernández, and Luis M. Liz-Marzán

Eur. Microsc. Anal., 2000, 77, 23–26

Techniques such as TEM and SEM have been employed to study the morphology of nanostructured materials. However, with these devices certain important characteristics such as the distribution and ordering of nanoparticles could not be studied with accuracy due to nanoparticle-beam interactions, which modify and distort their real shape and size and their 2D and 3D arrangement. This study intends to combine the technical capacities of TEM and SEM with those of AFM, in order to provide a complete structural and morphological vision of these nanostructures.