I'm recently concerning ultramicrotomy of SiC/ZrC film for TEM sample preparation.
The film lies on metal intermediate layer, which itself lies on alloy substrates, so in such sandwich structure it will be hard to observe both interfaces if the sample is prepared by ion milling of the cross-section, and ultramicrotomy seems workable. But I'm worried about the stiffness of SiC/ZrC since they are so close to the dimond and may cause the dimond knife broken.
So can I get good result by ultramicrotomy without breaking the dimond knife?
Or is there any other TEM sample preparation technique more suitable for this "sandwich" structure?
I do not expect good resultsl.
Knife certainly will need resharpening after a few cuts.
As nano-powder embedded in resin - maybe but will ruin the knife as was already mentioned. As bulk material - definitely not, but it is suitable for FIB - cost of FIB TEM sample preparation is not that high, if you consider price of ruined diamond knife.
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