thickness for ion milling.

The ion milling of insulators often leads to static charging of the surface of the sample. This, in turn, reduces the

sputter rate. When using the Ti standard holder (standard TEM holder), however, sufficient secondary electrons

are created by the ion beam also falling on the sample holder to largely compensate for the static charging.

The ceramics presented here are Al2O3 and ZrO2.

PREPARATION CONDITIONS

Mechanical pre-preparation

TXP core drill to get a 3 mm disc.

TXP for double sided polishing down to a final thickness of 50 µm

Diamond foils: 6 µm, 3 µm, 1 µm and 0.5 µm at 2000 rpm.

The illustrations show the grain structures of the two ceramic samples. The samples could be so very evenly and

gently thinned, that even a high-resolution TEM examination was possible.