Fabrication of a liquid cell for in situ transmission electron microscopy

Liquid cell transmission electron microscopy (LCTEM) enables imaging of dynamic processes in liquid with high spatial and temporal resolution. The widely used liquid cell (LC) consists of two stacking microchips with a thin wet sample sandwiched between them. The vertically overlapped electron-transparent membrane windows on the microchips provide passage for the electron beam. However, microchips with imprecise dimensions usually cause poor alignment of the windows and difficulty in acquiring high-quality images. In this study, we developed a new and efficient microchip fabrication process for LCTEM with a large viewing area (180 µm × 40 µm) and evaluated the resultant LC. The new positioning reference marks on the surface of the Si wafer dramatically improve the precision of dicing the wafer, making it possible to accurately align the windows on two stacking microchips. The precise alignment led to a liquid thickness of 125.6 nm close to the edge of the viewing area. The performance of our LC was demonstrated by in situ transmission electron microscopy imaging of the dynamic motions of 2-nm Pt particles. This versatile and cost-effective microchip production method can be used to fabricate other types of microchips for in situ electron microscopy.