Ilett, M. orcid.org/0000-0002-3111-1585, Naveed, E., Roncal-Herrero, T. et al. (3 more authors) (2023) In situ electron microscopy techniques for nanoparticle dispersion analysis of commercial sunscreen. Journal of Nanoparticle Research, 25 (6). 122. ISSN 1388-0764
Abstract
Nanoparticles are common active ingredients within many commercial products including sunscreen. Consequently, accurate characterisation of nanoparticles in these products is vital to enhance product design, whilst also understanding the toxicological implications of these nanoparticles. Whilst bulk techniques are useful in providing some information, they often cannot resolve individual particles, and therefore electron microscopy can be used for high-resolution nanoparticle characterisation. However, conventional high vacuum dry TEM does not accurately represent nanoparticle dispersions and other in situ methods must be used. Here, we use a combination of techniques including liquid cell transmission electron microscopy (LCTEM), cryogenic (cryo)-TEM and cryo-scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to characterise a commercial sunscreen containing titanium dioxide (TiO2) and zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles. Our work illustrates that whilst LCTEM does not require any sample preparation more beam artefacts can occur causing ZnO dissolution with only TiO2 nanoparticles visualised. Comparatively, cryo-TEM allows characterisation of both ZnO and TiO2, yet only cryo-SEM could be used to analyse the pure product (without dilution) but biased the characterisation to the larger fraction of nanoparticles and agglomerates. Ultimately, only with a combination of different in situ EM techniques can an accurate characterisation of commercial products be achieved in order to ensure effective and safe product design and manufacture.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Nanoparticle dispersion; In situ TEM; STEM; Sunscreen; Titanium dioxide; Zinc oxide |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Chemical & Process Engineering (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 08 Aug 2023 14:30 |
Last Modified: | 11 Sep 2024 14:58 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11051-023-05769-4 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:202203 |