Abstract
Various applications of ion beam sputtering to the high resolution electron microscopy have heen studied. Ion beam sputter-etching has been used to reduce granularity of carbon film prepared by routine vacuum evaporation. Also, it can be used to remove comtamination layer of the organic molecules arising from the dispersion liquid (distilled water) of the imogolite crystals. The resolving power (3.3 nm) of the atomic shadowing which is obtained by the sputter deposition in similar to the routine vacuum shadowing method is obtained by the measurement of width of tungsten shadow-casting appearing at the imogolite crystals with 2 nm diameter of the lod, where shadowing angle φ is 30°.
Furthermore, the fundamental characteristics of sputter-etching for the casein and ferritin particles are examined with respect to the varying sizes and distributions, which are dependent on both accelerating potential of argon ion beam and bombardment time.
It is found that the ion beam sputter-etching is very useful to remove the surface layers contaminated over the rigid sphere protein molecules under the non-thermal working state which is experimentally confirmed from the unaltered latex inserted into the specimen and more clearly reveals intracellular structure of casein and ferritin particles.
