Influence of the conductive coating on combined CPEM and Raman analysis.

The sample preparation is one of the fundamental steps to obtain a successful correlative microscopy experiment, and for non-conductive materials the deposition of a thin metal coating is often mandatory for a good SEM observation. Nevertheless, in case of correlative experiment, where AFM and Raman spectroscopy are involved in the workflow, this deposition will have a direct influence on both the analysis. In this paper, an investigation about the most common conductive materials used in SEM sample preparation, such as chromium, graphite and gold, and their behaviour in the construction of correlative microscopy workflow is proposed, showing in our results, that chromium is the best choice for this type of combined analysis.