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Updated: Dec 29, 2025

Electrophoretic Crystallization of Ultrathin High-performance Metal-organic Framework Membranes

Electrophoretic Crystallization of Ultrathin High-performance Metal-organic Framework Membranes

Published on: August 16, 2018

Robust ultraclean atomically thin membranes for atomic-resolution electron microscopy.

Liming Zheng¹, Yanan Chen^2,3, Ning Li^4,5

¹Center for Nanochemistry, Beijing Science and Engineering Center for Nanocarbons, Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, 100871, Beijing, China.

Nature Communications

|January 30, 2020

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

We developed a novel method for creating ultraclean graphene electron microscopy (EM) grids. These advanced graphene grids significantly improve imaging resolution for single atoms and protein structures, even at cryogenic temperatures.

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Last Updated: Dec 29, 2025

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Method to Visualize and Analyze Membrane Interacting Proteins by Transmission Electron Microscopy

Method to Visualize and Analyze Membrane Interacting Proteins by Transmission Electron Microscopy

Published on: March 5, 2017

Area of Science:

Materials Science
Electron Microscopy
Nanotechnology

Background:

High-resolution electron microscopy (EM) requires noise-free substrates.
Atomically thin graphene is a promising EM substrate material.
Fabricating robust, ultraclean graphene EM grids is challenging.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop a polymer- and transfer-free method for batch fabrication of graphene EM grids.
To demonstrate the utility of these graphene grids for high-resolution EM imaging.
To showcase improved imaging of single atoms and protein structures.

Main Methods:

Direct-etching fabrication of graphene grids with membrane tension modulation.
Utilizing polymer- and transfer-free techniques.
Testing graphene grids at room and cryogenic temperatures.

Main Results:

Achieved atomic-resolution imaging of single metal atoms and ferritin.
Enabled ultrathin vitrified ice layer formation for protein particle embedding.
Facilitated cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) 3D reconstruction of archaea 20S proteasomes to ~2.36 Å resolution.

Conclusions:

The novel graphene grids offer significant improvements in EM image quality.
This method expands the capabilities of EM for nanoscale imaging.
The developed graphene grids are suitable for both room-temperature and cryo-EM applications.