| Abstract: | A new technique for preparing electron-transparent specimens of hard particle powders is described. It consists of mechanically embedding the powder into a thin foil of soft metal followed by ion-beam etching. This has numerous advantages over other methods of examining powders, such as their direct examination when supported by a carbon film, or by using epoxy resin as an embedding medium. The metal foil can be chosen to minimize overlap of the spectrographic peaks of the metal and the hard particles. |
