Electron microscopy study of nanostructured and ancient materials

There are many techniques that can be used to study ancient materials. However, highresolution transmission electron microscopy (HREM) is one of the key techniques. This chapter discusses the particulars of HREM and their application to nanostructured materials and applications of HREM and related techniques to the study of ancient nanostructured materials. Metal nanoparticles have some aspects that make their observation by HREM difficult. For instance, in most cases particles will be tilted randomly with respect to the electron beam. The first information that can be produced by image processing is the Fourier transform of a HREM image. This produces information that is similar to the direct diffraction pattern of the particle. Electron microscopy can be used to fully characterize the shape, crystal structure, and defects of nanoparticles. It has been shown that it is possible to obtain by TEM the chemical analysis of nanoclusters down to a size of < 1 nm. It has also been shown that these techniques can be applied to the study of ancient materials.