Atomic-Scale Imaging of a Free-Standing Monolayer Clay Mineral Nanosheet Using Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy

Although aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) enables the atomic-scale visualization of ultrathin 2D materials such as graphene, imaging of electron-beam sensitive 2D materials with structural complexity is an intricate problem. We here report the first atomic-scale imaging of a free-standing monolayer clay mineral nanosheet via the annular dark field (ADF) STEM. The monolayer clay nanosheet was stably observed under optimal conditions, and we confirmed that the hexagonal contrast pattern with a pore of ∼4 Å corresponds to the atomic structure of clay mineral that consisted of adjacent Si, Al, Mg, and O atoms by comparison with simulations. The findings offer the usefulness of ADF–STEM techniques for the atomic scale imaging of clay minerals and various 2D materials having electron-beam sensitivity and structural complexity than few-atom-thick graphene analogues.