Towards nanoscale confinement in TEM liquid cells

Liquid confinement below micrometer thicknesses is of interest to several scientific disciplines and is inherently challenging to study experimentally. More extreme confinement at the single-digit nanometer scale is possible through the use of self-assembled nanostructures such as carbon nanotubes. Bridging the gap between micro- and nanoscale liquid confinement has been achieved with two-piece liquid cells within a transmission electron microscope (TEM), but irreproducibility and difficulties maintaining uniform liquid layer thickness makes high spatial and spectroscopic resolution challenging. We report on improvements made to a monolithic, in-situ TEM liquid cell¹ with sub 40nm liquid thickness that overcomes the common challenges encountered with two-piece TEM liquid cells.
1. Tanase, M. et al. High-Resolution Imaging and Spectroscopy at High Pressure: A Novel Liquid Cell for the Transmission Electron Microscope. Microsc. Microanal. 21, 1629–1638 (2015).