Extending the limits of molecular microanalysis

Abstract

Modern polymer blends are frequently composed of domains and interfacial phases having submicron dimensions. Previously, die characterization of specific unknown submicron polymer phases has been limited to selective staining methods that help to classify the phase but rarely lead to chemical identification. The present procedure uses parallel detection electron energy loss spectroscopy (PEELS) to perform submicron molecular microanalysis on beam sensitive materials. Polymer domains are first differentiated by their elemental composition and then by their characteristic carbon core loss edge structure. These spectra are compared to spectra recorded from polymers of known composition.A polymer film composed of alternating 0.5 μm layers of polycarbonate (PC) and polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) was used as a test specimen (Fig. 1). Ultra-thin sections (<50 nm) were prepared by microtomy, collected on unsupported 600 mesh copper grids and examined at −160°C usinga VG HB601UX dedicated STEM fitted with a Gatan 666 UHV PEELS. The combination of beam blanking, simplecontrol of electron dose, UHV, low energy spread FEG, stage stability and the ability to produce a high contrast image at a very low electron dose makes this instrument ideally suited for this experiment.