In Situ Transmission Electron Microscopy Imaging of Nanocrystal Transformations

Nanocrystals often readily change structure and morphology during growth, self-assembly and applications when interacting with their environments. It imposes challenges as well as opens opportunities for the understanding and engineering of these nanostructures for practical applications. Due to the nanometer length scale and the dynamic nature of these transformations, in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has become an indispensable technique for the investigation of these processes. Recently, the significant technical advances in in situ TEM have revealed many dynamic phenomena of nanocrystals with high spatial and temporal resolution that were previously unreachable. In this talk, I will show a few examples about the structural transformations of nanocrystals during growth and self-assembly in solution. Special attention has been made to the transient states, which may draw the system outside thermodynamic equilibrium. An understanding of the nanoscale dynamics and the intermediate states aid the future design of novel materials and devices.