Guest Editors
Utkur Mirsaidov
National University of Singapore
<p>Utkur Mirsaidov obtained both his bachelor's degree (May 2000) and PhD (December 2005) degrees in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Afterward, during 2006-2009, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he worked on design and nanofabrication of single-molecule biosensor devices for DNA sequencing. At the beginning of 2010, he moved to Singapore to start developing in situ liquid cell TEM platform for imaging soft and biological materials. In August of 2013, he started as an assistant professor of Physics and Biology at the National University of Singapore. He is now an associate professor (since June 2019) in the same departments.</p> <p>In Singapore, Utkur’s lab works on addressing several key issues related to nanomaterials synthesis, nanofabrication, and catalysis. The lab studies how nanomaterials form, transform, and assemble. To address these questions, his group has been developing instrumentation and computational approach for in situ liquid and gas phase TEM to visualize and characterize the nanoscale processes directly in solution in real-time.</p>
Kristian Mølhave
DTU-Nanolab, The National Centre for Nano Fabrication and Characterization at the Technical University of Denmark
<p>Kristian Mølhave is Associate Professor at DTU-Nanolab, the National Centre for Nano Fabrication and Characterization at the Technical University of Denmark. Kristian’s research group is developing microchip systems and methods for high resolution imaging with light and especially electron microscopes in order to provide new insights into biological, physical and chemical processes on the nanoscale. Kristian has worked on trapped ion laser cooling and quantum optics at Aarhus University where he also did his MSc. His PhD at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) was on 3D robotic nanomanipulation and microfabricated chip systems for this. Since then, he has mainly worked at DTU, initially on optical microscopy methods for living cell studies and biological electron microscopy. In the last decade, his group has focused on developing novel microchip systems for in situ electron microscopy, with devices for observing high temperature processes, such as nanowire growth, and a variety of systems for liquid phase transmission electron microscopy (LPTEM) and methods for LPTEM, such as holographic LPTEM.</p>
Collection Overview
Nanoscale processes in liquids are often a complex interplay of multiple physical and chemical processes. Liquid phase transmission electron microscopy (LPTEM) provides unique abilities to observe liquid process dynamics with high temporal and spatial resolution down to the atomic scale. In LPTEM, a liquid sample is encapsulated between two ultrathin electron transparent windows. In the imaging region, the overall thickness of the system should not exceed a few hundred nanometers so the electrons may pass through and provide good image resolution and contrast. The liquid system is typically based on microfabricated silicon microchips and can have built-in microelectrodes, heaters or other sensor systems. This forms a microlaboratory with control over applied stimuli and sample conditions. Graphene and other materials can also be used as membrane materials, and systems have also been developed for use in scanning electron microscopes or other systems. In the past decade, liquid phase electron microscopy has matured and become an established method to provide new insights in a wide range of scientific disciplines such as chemical synthesis, nanoparticle dynamics, softmatter, and electrochemical processes.
This journal collection will provide visual guides to methods and results obtained with LPTEM and related methods, using both custom built and commercial systems.
