Thin Graphite Supporting Films for High Resolution Work

Abstract

Background noise arising from amorphous carbon supporting films is a crucial problem for high resolution CTEM work, particularly for biological materials. Many people have been trying to overcome this problem, for example, by use of sophisticated image analysis by computers, but without convincingly successful results so far. On the other hand, it is theoretically expected that if we use thin single crystal films the background noise can be completely eliminated. This has been attempted by a few workers (1,2) who used single crystals of BeO or graphite for observing very small metal particles or single atoms. Here we shall report a method of preparing very thin and clean single crystal films of graphite and their properties.Preparation of thin graphite films. Firstly relatively thin graphite films were prepared by repeated cleavage of a graphite crystal between Scotch tapes. Small flakes of cleaved graphite crystal stuck on the tapes were separated in ethylene dichloride.