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In situ Determination and Imaging of Physical Properties of Soft Organic Materials by Analytical Transmission Electron Microscopy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2014

Nadejda B. Matsko ,
Franz P. Schmidt ,
Ilse Letofsky-Papst ,
Artem Rudenko  and
Vikas Mittal
Nadejda B. Matsko*
Affiliation:
Graz Centre for Electron Microscopy, Graz, Austria
Franz P. Schmidt
Affiliation:
Institute for Electron Microscopy and Nanoanalysis, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria Department of Physics, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
Ilse Letofsky-Papst
Affiliation:
Institute for Electron Microscopy and Nanoanalysis, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
Artem Rudenko
Affiliation:
J. R. Macdonald Laboratory, Department of Physics, Kansas State University, Kansas, USA
Vikas Mittal
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering, The Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
*
*Corresponding author. nadejda.matsko@felmi-zfe.at
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Abstract

Analytical transmission electron microscopy (ATEM) offers great flexibility in identification of the structural—chemical organization of soft materials at the level of individual macromolecules. However, the determination of mechanical characteristics such as hardness/elasticity of the amorphous and polycrystalline organic substances by ATEM has been problematic so far. Here, we show that energy filtered TEM (EFTEM) measurements enable direct identification and study of mechanical properties in complex (bio-)polymer systems of relevance for different industrial and (bio-)medical applications. We experimentally demonstrate strong correlations between hardness/elasticity of different polymers (polycaprolactone, polylactid, polyethelene, etc.) and their volume plasmon energy. Thickness and anisotropy effects, which substantially mask the material contrast in EFTEM bulk plasmon images, can be adequately removed by normalizing the latter by carbon elemental map. EFTEM data has been validated using atomic force microscopy phase images, where phase shift related to the hardness and elastic modulus of the materials.

Keywords

PCREFTEMEELSvolume plasmonmechanical propertiesorganic materials
Type
Biological Applications
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , June 2014 , pp. 916 - 923
Copyright
© Microscopy Society of America 2014 

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