Towards 3D determination of the surface roughness of core-shell microparticles as a routine quality control procedure by scanning electron microscopy
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Date
2024-08-02
Authors
Hülagü, Deniz
Tobias, Charlie
Dao, Radek
Komarov, Pavel
Rurack, Knut
Hodoroaba, VasileDan
ORCID
0000-0002-6854-4536Advisor
Referee
Mark
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
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Abstract
Recently, we have developed an algorithm to quantitatively evaluate the roughness of spherical microparticles using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images. The algorithm calculates the root-mean-squared profile roughness (RMS-RQ) of a single particle by analyzing the particle's boundary. The information extracted from a single SEM image yields however only two-dimensional (2D) profile roughness data from the horizontal plane of a particle. The present study offers a practical procedure and the necessary software tools to gain quasi three-dimensional (3D) information from 2D particle contours recorded at different particle inclinations by tilting the sample (stage). This new approach was tested on a set of polystyrene core-iron oxide shell-silica shell particles as few micrometer-sized beads with different (tailored) surface roughness, providing the proof of principle that validates the applicability of the proposed method. SEM images of these particles were analyzed by the latest version of the developed algorithm, which allows to determine the analysis of particles in terms of roughness both within a batch and across the batches as a routine quality control procedure. A separate set of particles has been analyzed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) as a powerful complementary surface analysis technique integrated into SEM, and the roughness results have been compared.
Description
Citation
Scientific Reports. 2024, vol. 14, issue 1, p. 1-13.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-68797-7
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-68797-7
Document type
Peer-reviewed
Document version
Published version
Date of access to the full text
Language of document
en