Faculty Candidate TEM Joint Chemistry/Physics Seminar: Soft Matter Dynamics from Liquid Phase Electron Microscopy

The evolution of soft matter in water is a key step in the formation of complex biological and synthetic materials. Typically, a delicate interplay exists between the kinetic and thermodynamic parameters which govern their behavior in solution, making it essential to understand formation process in order to design structures accurately. There have been great efforts made to characterize the structural evolution of soft matter assemblies, principally via in situ bulk scattering methods or ex situ microscopy.  In situ scattering experiments are typically performed on simple systems e.g. special micelles, providing a bulk overview of the sample dynamics, such as average micelle size or shape evolution. Ex situ microscopy is preferred for more complex structures, but is incapable of revealing the underlying dynamics and mechanisms of morphological transformations.

Here we show how liquid phase electron microscopy can be used to obtain direct real-time nanoscale observations of assembly processes. The ability to obtain single particle kinetics adds a new dimension to the analysis of soft matter dynamics, which, in combination with existing analytical tools and simulations of dynamic processes, provides new insights and design opportunities to control the structure and properties of soft materials.