Ultrasonic Nebulization for TEM Sample Preparation on Single-Layer Graphene Grids

Spray-coating using ultrasonic nebulization is reported for depositing nanoparticles on a TEM grid without many of the drying artifacts that are often associated with drop-casting. Spray-coating is suitable for preparing TEM samples on fragile support materials, such as suspended single-layer graphene, that rupture when samples are prepared by drop-casting. Additionally, because ultrasonic nebulization produces uniform droplets, nanoparticles deposited by spray-coating occur on the TEM grid in clusters, whose size is dependent on the concentration of the nanoparticle dispersion, which may allow the concentration of nanoparticle dispersions to be estimated using TEM.