A new fabrication method of carbon based phase plates for phase-contrast transmission electron
microscopy is presented. This method utilizes colloidal masks to produce pores as well as disks on thin
carbon membranes for phase modulation. Since no serial process is involved, carbon phase plate
membranes containing hundreds of pores can be mass-produced on a large scale, which allows
“disposal” of contaminated or degraded phase modulating objects after use. Due to the spherical shape
of the mask colloid particles, the produced pores are perfectly circular. The pore size and distribution can
be easily tuned by the mask colloid size and deposition condition. By using the stencil method, disk type
phase plates can also be fabricated on a pore type phase plate. Both pore and disk type phase plates were
tested by measuring amorphous samples and confirmed to convert the sinus phase contrast transfer
function to the cosine shape.
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