Determination of particle size and relative number concentrations in mono-, bi-, and trimodal gold nanoparticle samples: Dataset for Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) measurements

This dataset contains Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images of well-defined mono-, bi- and trimodal gold nanoparticle (AuNP) suspensions. By software-based automated image analysis (Zen v. 3.9.5, ZEISS, Germany) information about particle size and relative particle number concentrations (PNC) could be obtained for all measured samples. All data were generated within an interlaboratory comparison study designed to evaluate the performance of four different analysis techniques (DLS, NTA, SEM, spICP-MS) in characterising and distinguishing between different-sized nanoparticle fractions in mixed samples. Samples and experimental design The study was carried out using four different AuNP suspensions (“Nanospheres”, polymer-coated, PEG-carboxyl, and “ultra-uniform”). Three of the suspensions represented particle size standards with nominal diameters of 30 nm, 50 nm, and 100 nm, while the fourth (also 50 nm) served as number a concentration standard. A four-step experimental design was used to analyse all monomodal samples, as well as eight different bi- and trimodal mixtures. Dataset structure The SEM results are stored in the attached zip folder ‘AuNP_inter-method-study_SEM-images.zip’, with a separate subfolder for each sample. The particle size analysis results can be found in the accompanying Excel file ‘AuNP_inter-method-study_SEM_size-results.xlsx’. Further information and details about the general methodology, experimental design, sample preparation, technical setup and the data and file overview can be found in the ‘README’ section of the Excel-file or the ‘README_AuNP_inter-method-study_SEM.txt’ file. Corresponding data sets with results obtained by the other three nanoanalytical techniques can be found here: Data publication 1: DLS (https://doi.org/10.25826/Data20260209-100314-0) Data publication 2: NTA (https://doi.org/10.25826/Data20260209-102003-0) Data publication 4: spICP-MS (https://doi.org/10.25826/Data20260202-153839-0) The overall results are summarized in the publication “Determination of particle size and number concentrations in gold nanoparticle mixtures: An inter-method study using four analytical techniques (DLS, NTA, SEM and spICP-MS)” authored by Birgit Hetzer, Alexandra Müller, Ann-Katrin Meinhardt, Volker Gräf and Elke Walz (https://doi.org/10.1039/d6na00161k). Data reuse and interoperability The datasets are provided open-access, under a CC BY 4.0 licence, and are documented in detail to support reuse, reanalysis, and comparison across laboratories and analytical techniques. Explicit metadata and method-specific parameters enable interoperability with complementary datasets and facilitate the development, benchmarking, and validation of methods in nanoparticle size analysis. Intended Use The image datasets are intended for: method development and validation in nanoparticle characterization benchmarking of SEM performance in multimodal samples cross-method or interlaboratory comparison studies training and evaluation of automated (AI-based) image analysis models or other data analysis workflows