Transmission Electron Microscopy Imaging and Spectroscopy of 2D Materials for Biological Applications

Abstract

Graphene based materials, such as graphene, graphene oxide, and Carbon Nanotubes, have attracted a great deal of interest from the materials research community. Despite their outstanding properties, these materials pose significant challenges to the established characterisation techniques. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is considered a powerful tool due to its capability to achieve images of atomic-scale resolution. Now the new generation of aberration-corrected field emission TEM with spatial resolution better than 1 Å have made it possible to get images of not only individual point defects in light elements such as carbon, but also to study defect evolution in real time. Nevertheless, Electron Microscopy (EM) also poses its own obstacles in the study of materials. EM uses an electron beam (EB) to display a sample. The interaction of the EB with the sample can cause modifications to the sample, resulting in inaccuracies in the outcome image. In this thesis the first chapter is dedicated to graphene based materials. The second chapter is focused on the TEM, making clear the way it works and also the ways electron beam damage (EBD) occurs. And the final chapter is a research on the ways EBD affects graphene oxide (GO) specifically.

Date of Award	31 Dec 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Christopher Blanford (Supervisor), Cyrill Bussy (Supervisor) & Eric Prestat (Supervisor)