Model inspect f50

In order to investigate the morphological characteristics of the prepared irradiated pellets and as a function of the total electron dose, it was used a field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), FEI (Model Inspect F50) operating at 5 kV. In this work the samples were cut mechanically for the cross-section measurements using FE-SEM images and the support image processing and analysis software (Image J). Mechanical cutting to perform cross-section measurements of the metallic layer was used, since cutting the relative Ag thick layer by more advanced techniques, such as the Focused Ion Beam (FIB), would induce silver growth, amorphization and deposition of gallium ions during the milling process, modifying the structure of the material.^{70–74 (link)}

The microcrystalline powders were characterized using XRD with a D/Max-2500PC diffractometer (Rigaku, Japan) involving CuK α radiation (λ = 1.54056 Å) in the 10–70° 2θ range at a scan rate of 0.01° min⁻¹. Micro-Raman spectroscopy was carried out using an iHR550 spectrometer (Horiba Jobin-Yvon, Japan) coupled to a charge-coupled device (CCD) detector and an argon-ion laser (MellesGriot, USA) operating at 633 nm with a maximum power of 200 mW. The spectra were measured in the 50–1000 cm⁻¹ range. The SEM images were analyzed using field emission gun scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM) on an FEI instrument (Model Inspect F50) operating at 5 kV.

The structural characterization of the materials was performed at long-range, a D/Max-2500 PC diffractometer (Rigaku, Japan) with Cu Kα radiation (λ = 1.54056 Å) in the 2θ range of 10°–80° at a scan rate of 0.01°min⁻¹. To analyze the morphologies, a scanning electron microscope with a field emission gun (FEG-SEM) FEI Model Inspect F50, operating at 5 kV was used. Particle count analysis was performed using ImageJ software, with a minimum count of 100 particles. The silver content present in the microcrystals suffers oxidation during the synthesis process. To calculate the amount of oxidized silver [Ag⁺] in the microcrystals structure, first, the microcrystal concentration was converted from µg/mL to µmol/mL using the following equation: silver content in each microcrystal concentration = microcrystal concentration (µmol/mL) × 10^–6/Molecular Weight of the microcrystal. Then, the amount of silver was calculated based on the number of mols released by each microcrystal.