Helium Ion Microscopy for Imaging and Quantifying Porosity at the Nanoscale

Matthew J. Burch, Anton V. Ievlev, Kyle Mahady, Holland Hysmith, Philip D. Rack, Alex Belianinov, Olga S. Ovchinnikova

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

Nanoporous materials are key components in a vast number of applications from energy to drug delivery and to agriculture. However, the number of ways to analytically quantify the salient features of these materials, for example: surface structure, pore shape, and size, remain limited. The most common approach is gas absorption, where volumetric gas absorption and desorption are measured. This technique has some fundamental drawbacks such as low sample throughput and a lack of direct surface visualization. In this work, we demonstrate Helium Ion Microscopy (HIM) as a tool for imaging and quantification of pores in industrially relevant SiO2 catalyst supports. We start with the fundamental principles of ion-sample interaction, and build on this knowledge to experimentally observe and quantify surface pores by using the HIM and image data analytics. We contrast our experimental results to gas absorption and demonstrate full statistical agreement between two techniques. The principles behind the theoretical, experimental, and analytical framework presented herein offer an automated framework for visualization and quantification of pore structures in a wide variety of materials.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1370-1375
Number of pages6
JournalAnalytical Chemistry
Volume90
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 16 2018

Funding

*E-mail: [email protected]. Phone: 865-574-4871. ORCID Matthew J. Burch: 0000-0001-6139-9404 Anton V. Ievlev: 0000-0003-3645-0508 Alex Belianinov: 0000-0002-3975-4112 Olga S. Ovchinnikova: 0000-0001-8935-2309 Notes This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under Contract No. DE-AC0500OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for the United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/ downloads/doe-public-access-plan). The authors declare no competing financial interest.

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