Preserving the integrity of air- or moisture-sensitive samples being transferred from a protective environment to a scanning electron microscope is now easier with a vacuum-tight transfer stage invented at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Jane Howe and Lynn Boatner led a team that has solved a problem that has inexplicably hampered scientists for decades. "One of the challenges of using scanning electron microscopes and other vacuum-based analytical techniques to characterize lithium battery materials is because of their air and moisture sensitive nature," Boatner said. Even exposures of seconds can produce dramatic morphological and chemical composition changes. The ORNL team successfully used its transfer stage to study lithium-ion battery materials in two different scanning electron microscopes with no alterations. Details are outlined in a paper published in the Journal of Materials Science (Vol. 47, No. 3): http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/vacuum-tight-sample-transfer-stage-for-a-scanning-electron-microscopic-EiV21GnUpn