If the nanoparticles are dispersed in water, add small drop of nanoparticle solution on to the carbon coated copper grid. wait for 2 min and remove the excess with a tissue paper slightly touching the drop on the grid. Make sure your grid is not touching the tissue paper. Then leave the grid for 10 to 20 min to air dry and then go for imaging.

I know that sample preparation of TEM is very crucial. It is depends upon many factors like sample is hydrophobic or hydrophilic, sample is matellic or not, etc. I had do nanocrystal imaging through TEM . Now i want to do thin flim imaging ,please suggust me how make sample. 

Generally speaking, in the case of nanoparticle samples, the nanoparticles should be well dispersed in some solvent at first. If the nanoparticles were hydrophilic, water should be selected as the solvent. Otherwise, non-polar solvents like cyclohexane should be used. Then the dispersion should be carefully deposited on carbon-coated copper/nickle grids which are commercially available. Finally, when the solvent totally evaporated, the grid could be fixed on the TEM sample holder for characterization.

On the other hand, for thin-film samples, some pretreatment steps should be carried out at first to make sure that the samples get thin enough for TEM imaging. And most of the time, ion beam milling and ultrathin section are the techniques usually utilized for this pretreatment.

Navneet, for dispersions of NPs in liquid solutions, you just need to cast one drop of your solution on a "TEM grid" (search on the web for these, and you will find the products and suppliers, I use Agar scientific grids).

If you are especially interested to the dispersion state of your NPs in the liquid solution, then this could be useful for you:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263574869_A_General_Technique_to_Investigate_the_Aggregation_of_Nanoparticles_by_Transmission_Electron_Microscopy?ev=prf_pub

For solid samples, you need a specialized colleague which can cut thin (

Use the glue to adhere the film with the substrate onto another substrate. So the film could be held by two substrate. That is ok for you to machine.

For Nanocrystals, the synthesized materials are dispersed in 2-propanol solution under ultrasonication process. Then, the few drops of colloidal solutions are drop casting on Cu grid for the TEM measurements. 

Hi Navneeet,

The simplest way for imaging your particles in TEM should be:

(1) Casting of a drop of your nanocrystal solution onto a copper-carbon TEM grid 

(2) Wait for solvent evaporation in 

For thin film sample, ion milling is usually used. For nanocrystals, the strategy is even simpler. You just need to disperse the particles in some solvent and drop it on the copper grid.

If the nanoparticles are dispersed in water, add small drop of nanoparticle solution on to the carbon coated copper grid. wait for 2 min and remove the excess with a tissue paper slightly touching the drop on the grid. Make sure your grid is not touching the tissue paper. Then leave the grid for 10 to 20 min to air dry and then go for imaging.

For the thin films I would recommend lamella preparation using the Dual Beam (combined SEM - FIB) system. 

In all the answers I did not see any mention about the need to dilute the colloidal solution. Please dilute it well (sometimes more than 100 times). If you are working with metal oxides, I would suggest using isopropanol or other alcohols.

The simplest way is to pour few drops of your dispersion on carbon coated copper TEM grids (commercially available), dry the solvent and load into TEM.

Dear Navneet,

Sample preparation for TEM analysis by introduce one or two drops of your sample (any nanoparticles) dispersed in ethanol or methanol (sonicate the sample in ethanol about 30 minutes for good dispersion) on carbon coated copper grid and allow them to dry at room temperature overnight. Do the analysis carefully, and measurements will take at low power (200 kV) so as to reduce the damage to the sample from the high energy electron beam. But check weather your samples are magnetic materials or not, if magnetic check your TEM instrument compatibility with magnetic materials.

Dear Navneet

you got the idea for nano particle TEM sample preparation by above suggestion. If you want to make TEM sample (cross section or plan view) of thin film, then you have to choose other technique for TEM sample preparation.In this you have follow some steps to make TEM sample. I am attaching one very good paper in which you can have all detail steps for TEM sample preparation for different materials. 

Plz find the attachment.

Thanks

Deepak kumar