Investigation on material behavior in liquid by in situ TEM

Transmission electron microscopy provides great opportunities to establish structure-property relationships. However, such application is restricted to solid samples while challenging in liquid samples. The recent development of “liquid cells” techniques provide unprecedented capabilities of TEM to imaging and analysis samples in a liquid environment. Here, we describe two different experimental approaches to introduce liquid into specimen chamber and discuss the experimental limitation. Subsequently, we review recent applications of liquid cell TEM in materials science, especially in nanocrystal growth and electrochemical processes in nanobatteries. At the end, we provide an outlook on future experimental developments in the study of material behaviors in solution using liquid cell TEM.