I have top section and cross section of active side of the membrane. so is it possible to calculate the actual pore size and porosity of the membrane?
Thanks.
Try using ImageJ (freeware, opes source), and analyze particles feature. That will calculate the pore's size and circularity. Note that changing the brightness and using threshold has the ability to help distinguish between different textures ad @.
You can measure several pores in polished cross section (each SEM software has a measuring bar) and calculate an average pore size. You can also see the volumetric proportion of the total porosity in the material from the cross-sectional image. There is special software for image analysis. To better distinguish pores from other phases, set the image contrast high: the pores in the image should look black and the other phases white.
Try using ImageJ (freeware, opes source), and analyze particles feature. That will calculate the pore's size and circularity. Note that changing the brightness and using threshold has the ability to help distinguish between different textures ad @.
A Method to Measure Pore Size Distribution of Porous Materials Using Scanning Electron Microscopy Images Written by Eko Widiatmoko, Mikrajuddin Abdullah and Khairurrijal will be helpful
Article A Method to Measure Pore Size Distribution of Porous Materia...
You have one problem first: how big are your pores? This is a start, because depending on the magnification you are using, you only see one pore population. For example, I work with a silica with pores in the macro (2 um), meso (broad distribution from 40 nm to 6 nm) and micropores (1.8 nm). When magnifying up to 1000x I only can see the macro, however, magnifying 100000x at low vacuum i can see mesopores of 40~8 nm.. microporosity I never saw. And the sample preparation is also important depending on the pore size, you don't want to fill your pores with the material you're using for grounding the material (carbon and metalic deposition).
The porosity is a rough aproximation, as you can see the diameter of the pore, but the lack of Z-axis won't give you the depth, so the volume won't be acurate.
You can measure porous structure with different resolution and magnifying capacity. First, you have to think about what type of material you have to see for a porous structure then you have to coat with some coater like gold coater. then put mount inside your sem. according to material like polymer, metal, or nonmetal, you have to fix frequency and other parameters. then start to optimize from large to small resolution and magnification. you will find zoom structure, here you should use scale and mark it by measuring tools. In this way, you can find different porous structure at different parameters and magnifications
Determining pore size on a SEM is dependent on the programing of the instrument while analyzing the object of interest.
The instrument can be programmed to measure directly the pore diameter in Micrometre or nanometer. The SEM image would thus contain an information measured in micrometer or nanometer which is often referred to as pore diameter and some authors acclaimed it as pore size. This is different from the particle size.
It is difficult to measure pores by SEM, it should be use SEM graph with other software like Image J which give you the avarge of pore size.
Stereological analysis allows you to have an estimation of these parameters based on SEM imagens, though it must be stated that this is an estimation. I would recommend using this method for comparison between samples.
I have used the mean linear intercept method to estimate grain size and achieved an error around 15% for grain size. The estimation of the pore size and porosity was also performed. Nevertheless, the errors for pore size and porosity were larger, probably due to the anisotropic nature of the pores I have measured.
Thank for your kind response Amir Silber . Can i get accurate pore size from using image J software?
- Badges
- Science method
- Similar topics
- Mathematics
- Statistics
- Statistical Techniques
- Structural Equation Modeling