Premium
Measuring the randomness of micro‐ and nanostructure spatial distributions: Effects of scanning electron microscope image processing and analysis
Author(s) -
Mavrogonatos A.,
Papia EM.,
Dimitrakellis P.,
Constantoudis V.
Publication year - 2023
Publication title -
journal of microscopy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.569
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1365-2818
pISSN - 0022-2720
DOI - 10.1111/jmi.13149
Subject(s) - randomness , nanostructure , scanning electron microscope , image processing , metric (unit) , computer science , environmental scanning electron microscope , noise (video) , materials science , nanotechnology , artificial intelligence , optics , image (mathematics) , physics , mathematics , statistics , engineering , operations management
The quantitative characterisation of the degree of randomness and aggregation of surface micro‐ and nanostructures is critical to evaluate their effects on targeted functionalities. To this end, the methods of point pattern analysis (PPA), largely used in ecology and medical imaging, seem to provide a powerful toolset. However, the application of these techniques requires the extraction of the point pattern of nanostructures from their microscope images. In this work, we address the issue of the impact that Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) image processing may have on the fundamental metric of PPA, that is, the Nearest Neighbour Index (NNI). Using typical SEM images of polymer micro‐ and nanostructures taken from secondary and backscattered electrons, we report the effects of the (a) noise filtering and (b) binarisation threshold on the value of NNI as well as the impact of the image finite size effects. Based on these results, we draw conclusions for the safe choice of SEM settings to provide accurate measurement of nanostructure randomness through NNI estimation.