Energy-filtered transmission electron microscopy of biological samples on highly transparent carbon nanomembranes

Abstract

Ultrathin carbon nanomembranes (CNM) comprising crosslinked biphenyl precursors have been tested as support films for energy-filtered transmission electron microscopy (EFTEM) of biological specimens. Due to their high transparency CNM are ideal substrates for electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) and electron spectroscopic imaging (ESI) of stained and unstained biological samples. Virtually background-free elemental maps of tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and ferritin have been obtained from samples supported by ~ 1 nm thin CNM. Furthermore, we have tested conductive carbon nanomembranes (cCNM) comprising nanocrystalline graphene, obtained by thermal treatment of CNM, as supports for cryoEM of ice-embedded biological samples. We imaged ice-embedded TMV on cCNM and compared the results with images of ice-embedded TMV on conventional carbon film (CC), thus analyzing the gain in contrast for TMV on cCNM in a quantitative manner. In addition we have developed a method for the preparation of vitrified specimens, suspended over the holes of a conventional holey carbon film, while backed by ultrathin cCNM.

References in corpus (3)

• Two-Dimensional Gas of Massless Dirac Fermions in Graphene
• Imaging and Dynamics of Light Atoms and Molecules on Graphene
• One nanometer thin carbon nanosheets with tunable conductivity and stiffness

Cited by in corpus (3)

• The application of Graphene as a sample support in Transmission Electron Microscopy
• Rendering graphene supports hydrophilic with non-covalent aromatic functionalization for transmission electron microscopy
• Single-walled carbon nanotubes and nanocrystalline graphene reduce beam-induced movements in high-resolution electron cryo-microscopy of ice-embedded biological samples