1993 Volume 32 Issue 4 Pages 247-258
Recent transmission electron microscope (TEM) can analyze many kinds of secondary emissions, such as elastically and inelastically scattered electrons, unscattered energy-loss electrons, backscattered and secondary electrons, Auger electrons and emitted X-rays, from the specimen in a single instrument. In addition to these functions, many kinds of instruments being controlable specimen environments, such as temperature from an ultra-low to high, humidity, pressure of air and/or gas, and others, have been developped without decreasing the capabilities of TEM itself. This kind of TEM has become popular for the study of clay science and has succeeded in multiple types of measurements on the same clay mineral grain. This paper describes the recent development of like this multi-functions (MFs) TEM and its contribution to clay mineralogy:(1) resolution of MFs-TEM, (2) EDX detector with Ultra-thin window (UTW), (3) countermeasure for beam damage reduction, such as employment of low-dose unit system, high sensitibity imaging plate (IP) and TV system, and cryotransfer holder (at low temperature of liquid He or N2), (4) environmental cell method, (5) observation method of suraface charge and AFM, (6) quantitative particle counting method by TEM and the specimen preparation technique. TEM is only one of many instruments available today for the study of clay science but it is also hoped that a new aspect will be opened by the use of MFs-TEM for clay science.
