When I coat the nanofibers using gold, prior to doing SEM, the fibers collapse and hence the pore size is reduced leading to incorrect results. I have used the lowest current available in the machine i.e. 10 mA and a coating time of 20 s. Is there some alternate way I could do the SEM, which prevents the fibers from collapsing during the coating?
As you can see in the file the difference in the shape before and after coating is significant.
Dear Vivek
Have you tried to skip the coating and use a low accelerating voltage (1kV) at the SEM? For me this was mostly successful, in combination with a faster scan speed. Otherwise do you have access to a environmental SEM?
Dear Vivek,
It may be a long shot suggestion, but Hitachi developed IL2000 ionic liquid preparation for enhancing SEM contrast and observations. However, I am not sure if it is possible to buy the product yet, or if you can use it in any SEM machine. But, it may be worth trying.
Best regards,
Michał
I agree with Marc that you should be able to image non-conductive samples at low electron beam energy. But after seeing the image of your samples I am not sure if it is stable in vacuum at all.
Hello Vivek,
What I have used is a Variable-pressure (non-coated) measurement. It requires Nitrogen and the retrodispersed (backscattered) electron detector from the SEM, The SEM model we have used is EVOMA25 from Zeiss although there are different SEM models which could run this technique.
Here a link to a Hitashi SEM model with variable-pressure capabilities: https://www.aif.ncsu.edu/equipment/variable-pressure-scanning-electron-microsocpe-vpsem/
I hope this information helps.
Thank you for your replies. Making use of a low accelerating voltage with LEI mode actually worked for me, as Marc suggested. The coating is not necessary in this case and a higher voltage in fact damages the fibers, eating into them.
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