Determination of latex particle size distribution by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and image analysis: Standardized procedures and key factors

The factors that affect the determination of latex particle size distribution (PSD) using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and image analysis were studied. It has been found that suitable TEM magnification is in inverse proportion to particle size. Moreover, a linear functional relationship between uniformity ratio (U) of particle size and the minimum number of particles analyzed (N-min) is obtained by the two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistical test. Based on a two-step thresholding and image split technique, a standardized procedure is proposed to process the image of latex particles. The proposed method has significantly improved accuracy.