IMAGING NANOSIZED GOLD COLLOIDS BY ATOMIC-FORCE MICROSCOPY - A DIRECTCOMPARISON WITH TRANSMISSION ELECTRON-MICROSCOPY

Gold colloids have been prepared on carbon-coated copper grids using p oly(lysine) as a chemical adhesive. The particles have been imaged usi ng contact mode atomic force microscopy (AFM). The same individual par ticles have then been imaged by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). Comparison of the images shows that the particle h eight determined by AFM agrees remarkably well with that determined by TEM, but that the width of the images is consistently higher than the height. Doublets and triplets can be resolved well but subtle shape d ifferences are poorly reproduced by AFM.