I am thinking of a way to investigate the penetration of nanoparticles into ceramic sintered body. As we know, even in highly dense (up to 99.9% of relative density) sintered bodies, there are alway pores existing in the grain, or on the grain boundaries. So, if these sintered bodies are exposed to external extreme conditions (such as molten metal, molten glass, etc.), some external particles can penetrate or soak into the sintered bodies, via grain boundaries and pores. My question is, how can this penetration degree be observed and evaluated?
As you already know, my preference is fracture. The cleanest way to prepare specimen prone to smearing. If you can easily distinguish in between metal and ceramics with BSE, go for BSE; it has much better spatial resolution and signal/noise ratio compared to EDS. When you see suspicious place, make EDS spot analysis. If it shows metal, you can try EDS mapping. Of course, if your pores quite big, you can start with mapping. If you prefer polishing, for last steps use directional polishing – from ceramics side towards metal (for “reverse” smear).
Thank you so much, Vladimir. Your comments are always helpful for me. But I still have not completely understood the term of "fracture" you mentioned. Could you please explain more about that?
Best regards
You are making specimen by cutting cross section. You may try to fracture your specimen approximately along the same plane instead of cutting. May be you will need to cut smaller pieces of specimen to fracture them, or to make a notch or two.
Thank you very much, Vladimir! Now I fully understand your advice. I will try and hopefully wait for nice results :)
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