Three-dimensional analysis on nano-composite materials by transmission electron microtomography

采用透射电子显微断层扫描技术（tem）研究了嵌入橡胶基体中的颗粒填料的三维形貌。采用炭黑（CB）和二氧化硅（Si）两种纳米填料作为纳米填料。虽然CB和Si纳米颗粒在常规透射电镜（tem）下难以区分，但在tem下表现出不同；在TEMT三维重建的横截面图像中，CB和Si纳米颗粒分别表现为空心和固体颗粒，表明TEMT本身具有独特的颗粒判别功能。发现纳米颗粒在基体中具有明显的聚集性。有趣的是，每个聚集体只由一种物种构成；并不是单个聚集体中同时含有碳纳米管和硅纳米颗粒。我们开发了一种粒子填充算法来估计每个主要纳米颗粒在聚集体中的位置。

The three-dimensional (3D) morphology of particulate fillers embedded in a rubbery matrix was examined by transmission electron microtomography (TEMT). Two types of nano-fillers, i.e., carbon black (CB) and silica (Si) nano-particles, were used as the nano-fillers. Although the CB and Si nano-particles were difficult to distinguish by conventional transmission electron microscopy (TEIM), they appeared different by TEMT; the CB and Si nano-particles appeared to be hollow and solid particles in the cross-sectional images of the TEMT 3D reconstruction, respectively, demonstrating that TEMT itself provided a unique particle-discriminative function. The nano-particles were found to than aggregates in the matrix. It is intriguing that each aggregate was made of only one species; not a single aggregate contained both the CB and Si nano-particles A particle-packing algorithm was developed to estimate the positions of each primary nano-particle inside the aggregates.