Characterization of ceramic Materials by AFM

N.PELLEGRI

Mar del Plata

Simposio; 4th Latin-American Symposium on Scanning Probe Microscopy, Mar del Plata, 2-4 mayo 2007; 2007

The morphologic characterization of non-conductive materials has been widely benefited with the appearance of SPM techniques, because their versatility to analyze samples with no previous preparation such as metal coatings, acidic attacks, cuts, replica techniques, etc, necessaries to measure using SEM, TEM, etc. In this work the characterization of several ceramic samples are present using a NanoTec ELECTRONICA AFM equipment using different modes: contact, taping, jumping, etc, showing the potentiality of the technique. Many different samples were analyzed to determine properties such as grain size distribution, porosity, sintering mechanism, phase separation process, film thickness, etc. The materials showed are coatings and bulk samples of PZT, SBT, PLZT, ZrO2, SiO2-B2O3, Al2O3, etc. and other studies are shown to compare, complete and confirm results.