Visualizing hazardous solids with cryogenic electron microscopy (Cryo-EM)

Recent developments point to exciting potential of cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) for fundamental environmental research, especially for characterizing environmental samples with a high-water content. As a matter of fact, most environmental materials including soils, sediments, biomass, solid wastes and sludge are hydrated. This perspective provides a brief synopsis of cryo-EM and highlights emerging applications in environmental research. With cryogenic techniques, specimens are preserved by rapid freezing and observed with electron microscopes operating at high-vacuum and low temperature to keep the ice in amorphous state and reduce the effect of radiation damage. So far, cryo-EM has been successfully applied to advance fundamental understanding of physical, chemical and biological mechanisms due to its desirable properties to maintain the native state of hydrated samples and visualize structures at high resolution in three dimensions. The cryo-EM technique also has significant applications to the technology development of pathogen detection, sludge dewatering, waste treatment, and green chemical production from cellular biomass as cellular water content can be clearly observed and manipulated at the single cell level.