Mk. Cinibulk et al., QUANTITATIVE COMPARISON OF TEM TECHNIQUES FOR DETERMINING AMORPHOUS INTERGRANULAR FILM THICKNESS, Journal of the American Ceramic Society, 76(2), 1993, pp. 426-432
The question of which transmission electron microscopy technique can b
est be used to quantitatively determine the thickness of thin intergra
nular films is addressed. Measurement of the film thickness by diffuse
dark-field imaging resulted in values 50% to 100% larger than those d
etermined by high-resolution lattice imaging. Defocus Fresnel fringe i
maging is an indirect method of obtaining intergranular film thickness
; with this method thicknesses were over-estimated by 20% to 35%, with
the largest error caused by uncertainty in the exact location of frin
ge maxima. Although technically difficult to use, high-resolution latt
ice imaging is a method capable of the resolution necessary to obtain
detailed information of the boundary and the intergranular phase itsel
f; it was found to be the most applicable to quantitative measurements
of film thicknesses in Si3N4 materials, with an accuracy of +/- 1 ang
strom (+/- 0.1 nm).