Complex nanoparticle diffusional motion in liquid-cell transmission electron microscopy

Liquid-cell transmission electron microscopy (LCTEM) is a powerful in situ videography technique that has the potential to allow us to observe solution-phase dynamic processes at the nanoscale, including imaging the diffusion and interaction of nanoparticles. Artefactual effects imposed by the irradiated and confined liquid-cell vessel alter the system from normal “bulk-like” behavior in multiple ways. These artefactual LCTEM effects will leave their fingerprints in the motion behavior of the diffusing objects, which can be revealed through careful analysis of the object-motion trajectories. Improper treatment of the motion data can lead to erroneous descriptions of the LCTEM system’s conditions. Here, we advance our anomalous diffusion object-motion analysis (ADOMA) method to extract a detailed description of the liquid-cell system conditions during any LCTEM experiment by applying a multistep analysis of the data and treating the x/y vectors of motion independently and in correlation with each other and with the object’s orientation/angle.