Video Liquid Transmission Electron Microscopy

在科学领域，眼见为实。自从伽利略时代和他发明望远镜以来，胡克和范·列文虎克以及他们对第一台光学显微镜的开发做出了贡献，科学家们总是有必要看到物体，无论这些物体是活的还是不存在的。自从这些开创性的时代以来，我们现在得到了一大批工具，这些工具可以使物质可视化，几乎是一个分子一个分子地成像。透射电子显微镜可能是这些工具中最强大和最通用的，确实为化学、物理、生物学和医学领域的无数科学发现做出了贡献。今天，尽管成像的终极前沿是可视化分散在液体中的物质的能力，以及这种非常独特的环境如何影响分子组织。在这些液态环境中，水是最关键的，因为它是生命最重要的成分。然而，到目前为止，还不能在液体样本中进行电子显微镜检查，因为它的功能与高真空条件有关，因此不可能存在液体。然而，我们现在已经创造了新的材料，作为液体样品的透明保持器，将它们放置在电子束下，从而成像它们的含量。这确实可以创建一个独特的成像平台，允许在水(或任何其他液体)中对大量材料(包括生物制品)进行成像，而无需移除液体，从而在其自身环境中观察其结构和动态性质。此外，我们建议利用样品的液体性质来创建一种组合方法，其中液体样品可以轻松地注入到一个集成单元中，该单元将以接近相同水分子大小十倍的分辨率对它们进行成像，并分析诸如尺寸、结构、光学性质和化学性质等重要变化。

In science more than anywhere, seeing is believing. Since Galileo time and his invention of the telescope, Hook and van Leeuwenhoek and their contribution into developing the first optical microscope, scientists have always had the necessity to see objects whether these were living or not. Since these pioneering times, we have now been given a great collection of tools that allow the visualisation of matter almost imaging molecule by molecule. Transmission electron microscopy is possibly the most powerful and versatile of these tools and indeed contributed to a myriad of scientific discoveries across Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Medicine. Today, although the ultimate frontier of imaging is the ability to visualise matter when dispersed in a liquid and how this very unique environment affects molecular organisation. Among these liquid environment, water is the most critical as being the most important ingredient of life. Yet to date, no electron microscopy can be performed in a liquid sample as its functioning is associated with high vacuum conditions and hence no liquid can exist. However we have now created new materials that act as transparent holders of liquid samples to place them under an electron beam and thus image their content. This can indeed create a unique imaging platform that will allow the imaging of a large plethora of materials (including biologicals) in water (or any other liquid) without the need to remove the liquid and hence observe their structure and dynamic nature in its own environment. Moreover we propose here to exploit the liquid nature of the sample to create a combined approach where liquid samples can easily be injected into an integrated unit that will image them with resolution approaching ten times the size of the same water molecules as well as to analyse important changes such as size, structure, optical properties and chemical nature.