The development of methods for characterizing nanoparticles (NPs) at the nanometric scale is a major challenge for metrology researchers today. Characterizing the crystalline structure of NPs for regulatory purposes is necessary, as mixtures of NPs are frequently found in consumer products. and this physico-chemical parameter contributes to understanding potential risks to health and the environment.

The methods currently available do not enable individual NPs to be identified, nor their particle size distribution to be correlated with the crystallographic phases.. New methods need to be developed to identify individual particles at the nanometric scale.

This webinar will present Kikuchi transmission diffraction, an electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) technique, as a method of characterize a mixture of iron oxide nanoparticles by their crystalline structure. After identifying the crystal structure of three different iron oxide powders using X-ray diffraction, the samples were characterized by TKD.

The results show that TKD can be used to identify and correctly classify NPs in a mixture and can be combined with SEM imaging to construct histograms of size distribution as a function of NP crystal structure.

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