Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Electron Microscopy Sciences, the leading provider of supplies and equipment for microscopy, announced the addition of graphene transmission electron microscope support films to its product line. The new graphene support film provides an invisible, crystalline background that enables the unrivaled TEM characterization of organic and inorganic nanomaterials.
Graphene is a single atomic layer of carbon atoms tightly packed in a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice.
This novel material is atomically thin, chemically inert, consists of light atoms, and possesses a highly ordered structure. Graphene is electrically and thermally conductive, and is the strongest material ever measured. These remarkable properties make graphene the ideal support film for electron microscopy.
The graphene used in the support films is produced by the substrate-free gas-phase method which is the first and only process that can synthesize ultrahigh-quality graphene in a single step, without the use of substrates or graphite This technique results in graphene with a highly ordered structure that is composed of 99% carbon by mass (1% hydrogen) and can be used to directly image gold nanoparticles and their organic surface molecules in both conventional and atomic-resolution TEMs at a level that greatly surpasses any current TEM support film.
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