Making Sense of Complex Carbon and Metal/Carbon Systems by Secondary Electron Hyperspectral Imaging

0510248 - ÚPT 2020 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Abrams, K.J. - Dapor, M. - Stehling, N. - Azzolini, M. - Kyle, S.J. - Schäfer, J.S. - Quade, A. - Mika, Filip - Krátký, Stanislav - Pokorná, Zuzana - Konvalina, Ivo - Mehta, D. - Black, K. - Rodenburg, C.
Making Sense of Complex Carbon and Metal/Carbon Systems by Secondary Electron Hyperspectral Imaging.
Advanced Science. Roč. 6, č. 19 (2019), č. článku 1900719. E-ISSN 2198-3844
R&D Projects: GA MŠMT ED0017/01/01
Institutional support: RVO:68081731
Keywords : carbon orientations * carbon surface analysis * characterization * modeling * secondary electron emission * secondary electron hyperspectral imaging * secondary electron spectroscopy
OECD category: Coating and films
Impact factor: 15.840, year: 2019
Method of publishing: Open access
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/advs.201900719

Carbon and carbon/metal systems with a multitude of functionalities are ubiquitous in new technologies but understanding on the nanoscale remains elusive due to their affinity for interaction with their environment and limitations in available characterization techniques. This paper introduces a spectroscopic technique and demonstrates its capacity to reveal chemical variations of carbon. The effectiveness of this approach is validated experimentally through spatially averaging spectroscopic techniques and using Monte Carlo modeling. Characteristic spectra shapes and peak positions for varying contributions of sp(2)-like or sp(3)-like bond types and amorphous hydrogenated carbon are reported under circumstances which might be observed on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) surfaces as a result of air or electron beam exposure. The spectral features identified above are then used to identify the different forms of carbon present within the metallic films deposited from reactive organometallic inks. While spectra for metals is obtained in dedicated surface science instrumentation, the complex relations between carbon and metal species is only revealed by secondary electron (SE) spectroscopy and SE hyperspectral imaging obtained in a state-of-the-art scanning electron microscope (SEM). This work reveals the inhomogeneous incorporation of carbon on the nanoscale but also uncovers a link between local orientation of metallic components and carbon form.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0300765