Opportunities and challenges in liquid cell electron microscopy

Abstract

Advances in seeing small things Electron microscopes, particularly those with aberration correction, can view materials at the subnanometer scale. Additional improvements make it possible to obtain images at lower electron doses, thus minimizing the damage to the sample. However, for a number of materials, particularly those of biological origin, samples need to be imaged in solution. Ross reviews recent advances that have made it possible to do liquid cell electron microscopy, which opens up the possibility of studying problems such as the changes inside a battery during operation, the growth of crystals from solution, or biological molecules in their native state. Science , this issue p. 10.1126/science.aaa9886