A contamination-free electron-transparent metallic sample preparation method for MEMS experiments with in situ S/TEM

TL;DR

This paper presents a new contamination-free method for preparing electron-transparent samples on MEMS e-chips, enabling cleaner in situ electron microscopy experiments in materials science.

Contribution

The authors introduce a novel, simple, and fast sample preparation technique that minimizes contamination for MEMS-based in situ electron microscopy.

Findings

Samples prepared with the new method show reduced contamination.

The prepared samples perform effectively during in situ heat treatment experiments.

The methodology improves the reliability of nanoscale materials analysis.

Abstract

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are currently supporting ground-breaking basic research in materials science and metallurgy as they allow in situ experiments on materials at the nanoscale within electron-microscopes in a wide variety of different conditions such as extreme materials dynamics under ultrafast heating and quenching rates as well as in complex electro-chemical environments. Electron-transparent sample preparation for MEMS e-chips remains a challenge for this technology as the existing methodologies can introduce contaminants, thus disrupting the experiments and the analysis of results. Herein we introduce a methodology for simple and fast electron-transparent sample preparation for MEMS e-chips without significant contamination. The quality of the samples as well as their performance during a MEMS e-chip experiment in situ within an electron-microscope are evaluated during a heat treatment of a crossover AlMgZn(Cu) alloy.