Li Chen, Tardajos Adrian Pedrazo, Wang Da, Choukroun Daniel, Van Daele Kevin, Breugelmans Tom, Bals Sara
Electron microscopy for Materials research (EMAT), University of Antwerp, Groenenborgerlaan 171, 2020 Antwerpen, Belgium.
Electron microscopy for Materials research (EMAT), University of Antwerp, Groenenborgerlaan 171, 2020 Antwerpen, Belgium.
Ultramicroscopy. 2021 Feb;221:113195. doi: 10.1016/j.ultramic.2020.113195. Epub 2020 Dec 15.
Colloidal nanoparticles (NPs) including nanowires and nanosheets made by chemical methods involve many organic ligands. When the structure of NPs is investigated via transmission electron microscopy (TEM), the organic ligands act as a source for e-beam induced deposition and this causes substantial build-up of carbon layers in the investigated areas, which is typically referred to as "contamination" in the field of electron microscopy. This contamination is often more severe for scanning TEM, a technique that is based on a focused electron beam and hence higher electron dose rate. In this paper, we report a simple and effective method to clean drop-cast TEM grids that contain NPs with ligands. Using a combination of activated carbon and ethanol, this method effectively reduces the amount of ligands on TEM grids, and therefore greatly improves the quality of electron microscopy images and subsequent analytical measurements. This efficient and facile method can be helpful during electron microscopy investigation of different kinds of nanomaterials that suffer from ligand-induced contamination.
通过化学方法制备的包括纳米线和纳米片在内的胶体纳米颗粒（NPs）含有许多有机配体。当通过透射电子显微镜（TEM）研究纳米颗粒的结构时，有机配体充当电子束诱导沉积的源，这会导致在研究区域大量积累碳层，在电子显微镜领域这通常被称为“污染”。对于扫描透射电子显微镜来说，这种污染通常更严重，扫描透射电子显微镜是一种基于聚焦电子束且因此电子剂量率更高的技术。在本文中，我们报告了一种简单有效的方法来清洁含有带配体纳米颗粒的滴铸TEM网格。使用活性炭和乙醇的组合，该方法有效地减少了TEM网格上配体的数量，因此极大地提高了电子显微镜图像以及后续分析测量的质量。这种高效且简便的方法在对受配体诱导污染的不同种类纳米材料进行电子显微镜研究时可能会有所帮助。
