Summary: It is necessary to use a selective staining agent to enhance image contrast for transmission electron microscopy (TEM) morphological characterization of polymer composite particles. However, the typical selective staining agents osmium tetraoxide and ruthenium tetraoxide are neither suitable for poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)/polyacrylonitrile (PAN) composite particles. In this study, it was found that phosphotungstic acid (PTA) solution with 6.4 pH value is unsuitable for PMMA, but it can stain PAN. Therefore, it can be a selective staining agent in the TEM for PMMA/PAN composite particles. By controlling different thermodynamic and kinetic polymerization parameters, PMMA/PAN and PMMA/P(AN‐MMA) composite particles with nano to submicro sizes having different morphological structures were synthesized. TEM micrographs of all these composite particles with their predicted morphology have been compared, and the experimental results are completely consistent with the predictions.
