Journal article
Liquid cell transmission electron microscopy and its applications
- Abstract:
- Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has long been an essential tool for understanding the structure of materials. Over the past couple of decades, this venerable technique has undergone a number of revolutions, such as the development of aberration correction for atomic level imaging, the realization of cryogenic TEM for imaging biological specimens, and new instrumentation permitting the observation of dynamic systems in situ. Research in the latter has rapidly accelerated in recent years, based on a silicon-chip architecture that permits a versatile array of experiments to be performed under the high vacuum of the TEM. Of particular interest is using these silicon chips to enclose fluids safely inside the TEM, allowing us to observe liquid dynamics at the nanoscale. In situ imaging of liquid phase reactions under TEM can greatly enhance our understanding of fundamental processes in fields from electrochemistry to cell biology. Here, we review how in situ TEM experiments of liquids can be performed, with a particular focus on microchip-encapsulated liquid cell TEM. We will cover the basics of the technique, and its strengths and weaknesses with respect to related in situ TEM methods for characterizing liquid systems. We will show how this technique has provided unique insights into nanomaterial synthesis and manipulation, battery science and biological cells. A discussion on the main challenges of the technique, and potential means to mitigate and overcome them, will also be presented.
- Publication status:
- Published
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(Preview, Version of record, 1.9MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1098/rsos.191204
Authors
- Publisher:
- The Royal Society
- Journal:
- Royal Society Open Science More from this journal
- Volume:
- 7
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 191204
- Publication date:
- 2020-01-15
- Acceptance date:
- 2019-11-19
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2054-5703
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1084137
- Local pid:
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pubs:1084137
- Deposit date:
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2020-03-09
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Pu et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2020
- Rights statement:
- © 2020 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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