title: Fabrication of marker area to align TEM tomographic tilt series of rod-shaped specimens.
abstract: In this study, we present a new method for placing markers for alignment of tomographic tilt-series of rod-shaped specimen before 3D reconstructions. By this method, markers (gold nanoparticles) were placed only on the carbon layer (referred to as the "marker area") deposited for protecting the specimen surface against ion beam irradiation; this placement was achieved by vacuum evaporation of gold with the help of a mask fabricated adjacent to the specimen. Experimental results showed that the use of the proposed method facilitates the identification of the markers in the alignment process, because the image of the marker area consists of simple high-contrast images of the gold nanoparticles on the carbon layer. The performance of the proposed method was successfully verified experimentally by applying it to a high-density Au/SiO₂ nanocomposite material as a test specimen.
authors.affiliation: National Metrology Institute of Japan, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Central 5, Higashi 1-1-1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8565, Japan. misa-hayashida@aist.go.jp
authors.forename: Misa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hayashida
authors.forename: Shinya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Terauchi
authors.forename: Toshiyuki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fujimoto
mesh_terms: D055032:Electron Microscope Tomography / Q000379:methods*; D006046:Gold; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000648:ultrastructure
chemical_list: D006046:Gold