The Small Angle Cleavage Technique for XTEM Sample Preparation

Extract

The Small Angle Cleavage Technique (SACT) is a relatively simple and inexpensive method of producing superior cross sectional TEM specimens. For speed of preparation, it is unsurpassed; for example, ten samples can easily be prepared in about an hour from a typical material. It is particularly well suited for rapidly examining coatings and thin films very soon after they have been deposited. A major limitation of the technique is that it does require the substrate material to cleave or fracture. For this reason, it has been applied almost exclusively to semiconductor materials, but the technique has been extended quite successfully to other substrates such as glass, silicon carbide, quartz, sapphire, and other hard materials. Several procedures have been added or modified to the original technique developed by McCaffrey that makes it much easier to get started in using the technique. A detailed pictorial outline of the technique has been described elsewhere by the authors.