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Updated: Jul 18, 2025

A Method to Manipulate Surface Tension of a Liquid Metal via Surface Oxidation and Reduction
Published on: January 26, 2016
Observing the Evolution of Metal Oxides in Liquids
Zewen Kang1, Junyu Zhang2, Xiaohua Guo2
1Institute of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Biochemical Technology, Huaqiao University, Xiamen, 361021, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Metal oxides with diverse compositions and structures have garnered considerable interest from researchers in various reactions, which benefits from transmission electron microscopy (TEM) in determining their morphologies, phase, structural and chemical information. Recent breakthroughs have made liquid-phase TEM a promising imaging platform for tracking the dynamic structure, morphology, and composition evolution of metal oxides in solution under work conditions. Herein, this review introduces the recent advances in liquid cells, especially closed liquid cell chips. Subsequently, the recent progress including particle growth, phase transformation, self-assembly, core-shell nanostructure growth, and chemical etching are introduced. With the late technical advances in TEM and liquid cells, liquid-phase TEM is used to characterize many fundamental processes of metal oxides for CO2 reduction and water-splitting reactions. Finally, the outlook and challenges in this research field are discussed. It is believed this compilation inspires and stimulates more efforts in developing and utilizing in situ liquid-phase TEM for metal oxides at the atomic scale for different applications.
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