Transmission Electron Microscopy

In transmission electron microscopy (TEM) a beam of electrons is transmitted through a thin specimen to form an image. After magnification the image is projected onto a fluorescent screen or a digital camera.

The details that TEM can reveal are very fine, almost molecular in spatial resolution. For objects like viruses, nanoparticles or polymer aggregates hardly any preparation is necessary. Larger structures are usually cut in thin sections (<100nm) to make them transparent for the electron beam. All samples need to be placed on 3 millimeter discs (grids) with a fine mesh. TEM allows imaging of the structure of a wide range of samples from biological, medical, and materials sciences.

WEMC has two Transmission Electron Microscopes which offer the following features:

  • Standard TEM
  • High-resolution TEM
  • Tomography/Three dimensional imaging
  • Cryo-TEM
  • Negative staining electron microscopy
  • Immuno electron microscopy