Ultramicrotomy of powder material for TEM/STEM study

This paper summarizes methods conventionally used to prepare thin foil samples of powder materials for transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and introduces another variant, ultramicrotomy, for the preparation of TEM samples of industrial dust powder. The choice of ultramicrotoming in the present work was based on two features of this technique: (1) it can produce thin-sectioned specimens with a uniform thickness; (2) it can retain the original elemental distribution in phases of the sample during sectioning. Dust powder preparation and the sectioning procedure are described in this paper. The results of the method are illustrated by examples of TEM/STEM micrographs of industrial dust.