Watching macromolecules dance in real-time with liquid-phase TEM

Observing single molecules in real-space and time continues to pose a challenge. Working towards overcoming this limitation, we have implemented liquid-phase TEM (transmission electron microscopy) to image individual macromolecules. Unlike static imaging with conventional TEM, this liquid-phase TEM opens opportunities to investigate dynamical features of materials with nanometer resolution. Nevertheless, imaging single molecules in liquid with TEM comes with a lot of challenges. In this talk, I will discuss how by using graphene sheets to wrap liquids, we demonstrate the possibility of investigating polymers with single molecule resolution. Moreover, our study provides a direct visualization of numerous dynamical features of polymers. We expect our work to trigger more studies to investigate various other soft and living materials with liquid-phase TEM in future.