In Situ Liquid Phase TEM of Chemical Reactions and Materials Transformations

The recent development of liquid phase transmission electron microscopy (TEM) have enabled break-throughs in characterizing various chemical reactions and materials transformations. It has unveiled many materials transformation dynamics, and the structure and bonding evolution in situ/in operando with high spatial resolution. Since the electron beam for imaging can also induce perturbation to the chemical processes, it has been a concern that the observed phenomena in a liquid cell may deviate from the real-world processes. Strategies have been developed to overcome the electron-beam induced issues, and to connect the observation with the real-world chemical reactions. Here, I will discuss various strategies in using liquid cell TEM to study nucleation, growth, and self-assembly in solution, where electron beam is often used to initiate the reactions. Due to the complexity of the liquid cell TEM experiments, strategies are often employed simultaneously, for example, low dose imaging, advanced electron microscopy techniques, carefully designed control experiments, multimodal characterization, and so on. The multidisciplinary research has opened many new opportunities by merging different expertise and approaches together stimulating innovations and fostering novel discoveries.