AMPM Center Professor Yu Han and co-workers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have developed a method that, for the first time, allows researchers to obtain atomic-resolution imaging of electron beam-sensitive materials which are previously considered unsuitable for transmission electron microscopy (TEM).

Prof. Han and his team members Yihan Zhu, Lingmei Liu, Xiangrong Ying and Chia-En Hsiung have worked in collaboration with Daliang Zhang, Rachid Sougrat and Kun Li from the KAUST Core Laboratories. The result of this research has been recently published in the prestigious scientific journal, Science.

 Prof. Yu Han

"Our technology consists of three methods that are developed to address three challenges in low-dose TEM: how to quickly align the crystal zone axis with minimum electron dose; how to align noisy images to increase the signal to noise ratio; and how to interpret the image. Prior to our study, people did not succeed in these three aspects when dealing with extremely low dose high-resolution TEM" explains Prof. Han.

"This technology can be generally applied for imaging a variety of electron beam sensitive materials, such as metal organic frameworks, polymers, supermolecular structures, and proteins", he adds. 

Research and Teamwork result in success

The work carried out through the cooperation among both KAUST teams has been essential to achieving this successful result. Prof. Han: "On the basis of our previous study on this topic (Nature Materials, 2017), we achieved the seemingly impossible task of imaging electron beam sensitive materials in one year by collaborating with Dr. Daliang Zhang in the KAUST Core Labs, whose contribution to this work is crucial".

For his part, AMPM Center Director, Professor Eddaoudi, warmly congratulates Prof. Yu Han on this valuable research advancements and notes: "Prof Yu Han and his coauthors in this contribution have paved the way to making the long believed impossible possible; the potential of the introduced imaging capability is limitless and it is prospective impact on various disciplines of science is tremendous".

Congratulations Prof. Yu Han and team on your latest accomplishment!

Selected Publications

• Atomic-resolution transmission electron microscopy of electron beam–sensitive crystalline materials 
  D. Zhang, Y. Zhu, L. Liu, X. Ying, C-E. Hsiung, R. Sougrat, K. Li, Y. Han
  Science, eaao0865, (2018)