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arXiv · 2012.02941

A contamination-free electron-transparent metallic sample preparation method for MEMS experiments with in situ S/TEM

Matheus A. Tunes·Cameron Quick·Lukas Stemper·Diego S. R. Coradini·Jakob Grasserbauer·Phillip Dumitraschkewitz·Thomas M. Kremmer·Stefan Pogatscher
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Abstract

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are currently supporting ground-breaking basic research in materials science and metallurgy as they allow in situ experiments on materials at the nanoscale within electron-microscopes in a wide variety of different conditions such as extreme materials dynamics under ultrafast heating and quenching rates as well as in complex electro-chemical environments. Electron-transparent sample preparation for MEMS e-chips remains a challenge for this technology as the existing methodologies can introduce contaminants, thus disrupting the experiments and the analysis of results. Herein we introduce a methodology for simple and fast electron-transparent sample preparation for MEMS e-chips without significant contamination. The quality of the samples as well as their performance during a MEMS e-chip experiment in situ within an electron-microscope are evaluated during a heat treatment of a crossover AlMgZn(Cu) alloy.

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Matheus A. Tunes, Cameron Quick, Lukas Stemper, Diego S. R. Coradini, Jakob Grasserbauer, Phillip Dumitraschkewitz, Thomas M. Kremmer, Stefan Pogatscher. 2020-12-05. A contamination-free electron-transparent metallic sample preparation method for MEMS experiments with in situ S/TEM. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14051085

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