A simple method to clean ligand contamination on TEM grids

Colloidal nanoparticles (NPs) including nanowires and nanosheets made by chemical methods involve many organic ligands. When the structure of NPs is investigated via transmission electron microscopy (TEM), the organic ligands act as a source for e-beam induced deposition and this causes substantial build-up of carbon layers in the investigated areas, which is typically referred to as contamination in the field of electron microscopy. This contamination is often more severe for scanning TEM, a technique that is based on a focused electron beam and hence higher electron dose rate. In this paper, we report a simple and effective method to clean drop-cast TEM grids that contain NPs with ligands. Using a combination of activated carbon and ethanol, this method effectively reduces the amount of ligands on TEM grids, and therefore greatly improves the quality of electron microscopy images and subsequent analytical measurements. This efficient and facile method can be helpful during electron microscopy investigation of different kinds of nanomaterials that suffer from ligand-induced contamination.

Automated summary

This paper presents a simple and effective method for cleaning drop-cast TEM grids containing organic ligands, which significantly improves the quality of electron microscopy images and subsequent analytical measurements. By reducing the amount of ligands on TEM grids using activated carbon and ethanol, this method can be helpful in investigating various nanomaterials suffering from ligand-induced contamination.