A frequently asked question is: with the versatility of today’s SEMs, is there any reason to add a conductive coating to samples for electron microscopy imaging? If yes, what should we coat it with?
It’s well documented why coatings are required, but what coating to use for each application is not. The choice of method, target material and coating thickness varies depending on the sample and the specific information that we want to obtain from it.

The increasing amount of applications for nano-fibres, especially those produced in the electrospinning process, creates a need to image them in a way that allows users to examine not only their alignment and diameter, but also their discrete morphology.

Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) is a high-resolution imaging technique that provides information about the structure and morphology of specimens. It uses a high energy electron beam to penetrate samples and renders images using the transmitted part of the beam.

For low-resolution imaging, a majority of the SEM samples can be sputtered or carbon-coated in the pressure range of 1 x 10−1 to 1 x 10−2 mbar. A higher vacuum lower than 1 x 10−3 mbar base pressure allows the sputtering of oxidizing metals.

In carbon thin film applications the quality of carbon film production is key for successfully conducting complex experiments. Commonly, carbon coatings are used in sample preparation for TEM (ambient and cryo) imaging, EDS analysis and replicas.

The 2017 Nobel Prize in cryo-Transmitted Electron Microscopy highlighted the significance of direct observation of molecular world of the cell. Understanding the structure of bio-molecules as well as their changes over cell processes plays an important role in curing diseases and in drug discovery.

Chloroplast function is orchestrated by the organelle’s intricate architecture. By combining cryo-focused ion beam milling of vitreous Chlamydomonas cells with cryo-electron tomography, we acquired three-dimensional structures of the chloroplast in its native state within the cell.

Nanoscience offers the potential for great advances in medical technology and therapies in the form of nanomedicine. As such, developing controllable, predictable, and effective, nanoparticle-based therapeutic systems remains a significant challenge. Many polymerbased nanoparticle systems have been reported to date, but few harness materials with accepted biocompatibility.

Cryo-electron tomography (CET) is a well-established technique for imaging cellular and molecular structures at sub-nanometer resolution. As the method is limited to samples that are thinner than 500 nm, suitable sample preparation is required to attain CET data from larger cell volumes.

Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) allows atomic scale characterization of solid-solid interfaces, but has seen limited applications to to solid-liquid interfaces due to the volatility of liquids in the microscope vacuum.