Structural analysis of nano structured carbon by transmission electron microscopy and image processing

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is one of the highest resolution analysis methods of materials. The three dimensional recognition of the materials is difficult by TEM because the observation data is projection images through the materials. In this study, space structure of carbon nanotubes loaded with metal particles was analyzed by three dimensional TEM (3D-TEM) . The nano structured carbons are also observed by high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) with Cs corrector. Cup-stack type carbon nanotubes (CSCNTs) loaded with Pt particles (2–3 nm in diameter) prepared by GSI Creos Corporation were analyzed by these methods. Pt particles are bound selectively to the edges of hexagonal carbon layers of inside and outer surface of CSCNTs efficiently and can be expected to work well as catalysts of electrodes of fuel cell. It is sometimes difficult that the nano sized area is analyzed by selected area electron diffraction (SAD) because the selected area aperture cannot be so small. The HRTEM and image processing technique give similar results of SAD when it works and revealed to be useful to analyze nano structured carbons.