Navigating through the various characterisation technique?

We synthesis a lot of ceramic catalysts. For a long time now, we are facing problems in accurately and efficiently characterising the synthesized powders. We have identified the main problems as follows -


* We have a doubt whether we are doing the sample treatment correctly or not. A lot of vendors tell us that, “providing a dry, fine powder is sufficient”. But is there any comprehensive guide or something that can help me help in deciding the appropriate sample treatment for a particular characterisation method?
* For a lot of techniques/methods, depending on the instruments the operator has to choose between a lot of parameters depending on the inherent characterisation properties of the powders. We feel the operators that we are dealing with nonchalantly input the default settings and this makes the output coming out not so accurate. Again, how do I navigate efficiently through this space?
Anyone who has experience in operating various machines and analysing the output, any help will be appreciated.


PS – We are doing the following techniques –


* Powder XRD
* ICP-AES
* TEM/SEM
* XRF
* Chemisorption


