Transmission Electron Imaging and Diffraction of Asbestos Fibers in an SEM

Published

July 24, 2024

Author(s)

Jason Holm, Elisabeth Mansfield

Abstract

Asbestos, a known carcinogen, can be found in consumer products ranging from building materials to textiles. While most of the products are no longer produced domestically, the release of asbestos fibers from these and other non-anthropogenic sources into the environment presents persistent public health concerns. To that end, several electron microscopy (EM) test protocols have been developed to identify asbestos in the environment and ambient air. Fiber identification by EM involves the determination of fiber morphology by imaging, elemental composition by energy dispersive X-ray analysis, and crystal structure by electron diffraction. When the test protocols were developed, scanning EMs (SEMs) and transmission EMs (TEMs) were both available, but SEMs were unable to provide crystallographic information from individual fibers. For this and other reasons, TEMs were considered mandatory to demonstrate the presence of asbestos and more importantly to differentiate asbestos fibers from other fibrous materials using selected area electron diffraction. Since then, numerous transmission electron imaging and diffraction methods have been implemented in SEMs, effectively opening the door to using SEMs for tasks that were previously reserved exclusively for TEMs. In this contribution, we demonstrate how some of those SEM methods can be used to easily obtain electron diffraction patterns (DPs) from asbestos fibers as well as different ways to visualize fibers.

Conference Dates

July 28-August 1, 2024

Conference Location

Cleveland, OH, US

Conference Title

Microscopy & Microanalysis 2024

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

transmission electron diffraction, STEM-in-SEM, SEM, TEM, asbestos, 4D STEM, electron microscopy, transmission SEM, low kV STEM

Citation

Holm, J. and Mansfield, E. (2024), Transmission Electron Imaging and Diffraction of Asbestos Fibers in an SEM, Microscopy & Microanalysis 2024, Cleveland, OH, US, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=957352 (Accessed April 28, 2026)

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