Dear colleague Gbadebo Yusuf,

Have a nice time and good day.

The SEM micro graph Help to study the morphology of thin films, Please have a look to the attachments. I wish that help and be useful to you.

yours

A. El-Denglawey

 @ G Yusuf

Will you please elaborate your question? Whether you want to find out the structure of thin film material or interpret the morphology of the thin film recorded using SEM. 

Most SEM systems have more than one detector. With these, you can study the surface morphology / structure of your thin film or obtain the different elemental compositions. Heavy metals for example are easily distinguished from a polymer matrix when the back scattered electron detector is used, etc.

Thank you Genesis for your explanations

. @Jitendra, Yes,  I want to know how to interpret the morphology of thin films recorded using SEM. 

Thank you Dr.  El-Denglawey 

Dear Yusuf,

SEM provide information about topography (overall appearance of sample i.e. smooth, rough) and morphology (size, shape etc) about the sample under investigation. Now these visuals/measured parameters can be correlated with your experimental conditions, physical or chemical properties of your film material (possibilities are endless) etc. 

 Back electron scattered imaging (BSE) in SEM provides information about compositional contrast.  It indicates about the presence of different phases/elements in the film by (Avg. atomic No or atomic no/ ) contrast difference but we cannot know about the elements. To know about the elements, one has to record EDX spectra for elemental analysis. it is a fast method for finding out  the presence of elements in the film (boron onwards it detects). 

Thank you Nuwad. I often come across some literatures which mentioned the specific shape of their samples's morphology. For instance, "Matlike", "Rodlike", and so on. Do we have some theories that discuss about the possible shape or these researchers merely compare the shape with mat or rod?

Dear Yusuf,

If an author is using "like" means these morphologies are merely compared with the lookalike eg. rod-like,  cauliflower-like etc.  But one can always synthesize the exact miniature version of several shapes by controlling the experimental parameters. 

Biggest advantages of SEM is that its provide 3-D representation of  sample surface and seeing is believing. Thus using SEM you can observe the shape and size of material eg. cubic, hexagonal sheets, circular sheets, rods etc, and their length, bredth, area, angle  also can be measured using SEM software after recording the micrograph. 

Thank you Dr Nuwad.