The Nanoscale World

Surface Area

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Antoinette posted on Wed, Oct 2 2013 4:44 AM

I am busy with some metal sputtered electrodes samples and need to determine the surface area and compare the results with other methods. With in situ electro chemical methods there is about a 300% increase in the "real" area versus the geometric area, whereas the with the AFM (using the Image Surface Area parameter in the Rougness measurement) the increase in area is less than 3%. Difference between the methods is expected as the electro-chemical method measures the whole surface whereas AFM only measures about 50x50 microns, but a 3% Image Surface Area Difference doesnt seem right. Is there any other function in the offline software or measurement type I can employ to measure the surface area or check these results?

Thank you!

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Suggested by obi-mike

Hi!

What is your scanning resolution?

I guess for such a large increase, the produced roughness is very fine. So Iimagine it could be that for a 50x50um scan your resolution is just too low to actually "see" the real roughness.

I'd go down to a smaller scan size (maybe with a resolution of <10nm/px) and do a few scans. Safes time too, usually.

Cheers, mike

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