Know your detergents: A case study on detergent background in negative stain electron microscopy

To counteract this ubiquitous problem, we present a case study on commonly used detergents. We show that most detergents produce significant background in negative stain EM, even below nominal critical micelle concentration (CMC). Unawareness of such artefacts can lead to misinterpretation of sample quality and homogeneity. We hope that this study can serve as a template to evaluate images in the early phases of a project.