Morphology Study by Using Scanning Electron Microscopy

The synthesis and characterization of microand nanomaterials have received broad attention and become a leading edge in materials science and technology. Functional microand nanomaterials endow us the possibility to develop devices with distinguished performance in electronics, magnetics, optics, and photonics. In addition to the composition, the size and shape are two other important factors that determine properties of functional materials. One of the major challenges in this active field is the study of morphology-controlled crystal growth process. The structure of crystalline solid, whatever is its dimension, can be characterized by several means such as X-ray diffraction and microscopy, for microand nanomaterials, use of electron microscopy is necessary. In this chapter, we will present how microstructures of some important functional materials are characterized by employing scanning electron microscope (SEM). The sample fabrication technique for these special materials (crystalline powders and nanostructured films) will also be discussed. We will cite, for example, microstructures of Cu-base, Zn-base and Nb-base compounds. Structure evolutions and formation mechanisms are discussed based on the observation from SEM. These results indicate that SEM is a very powerful tool to study the crystal growth morphology and assist the micro and nano-fabrication.