TEM specimen preparation of individual SiC/C composite (SCS-6) fibers

SiC/C based fibers (SCS) have exciting possibilities as reinforcements in advanced metal and ceramic matrix composite materials and there has been a growing interest in preparing specimens of these fibers for TEM studies. Unfortunately, the task of preparing very thin cross section of entire fibers is difficult because the constituent materials making up the fibers have widely different ion milling rates i.e. a carbon core surrounded by a SiC layer coated internally and externally with carbon. In this article, a rapid and reliable technique for preparing TEM specimen of the SCS-6 SiC fiber (manufactured by Textron) is described and together with the results of CTEM, HREM and PEELS studies. The technique is based on a general method of TEM specimen preparation of small objects, e.g. fibers and powder, reported elsewhere.