Student Seminar: Shrinking the Scale: Exploring Electron Diffraction from Micro to Nano

     Venue: AG-09/11  Lecture Hall, Chemical Sciences Building

Electrons, like X-rays and neutrons, are powerful probes for structural studies. Because of their strong interaction with matter, electron diffraction enables structure determination from crystals only a few hundred nanometers in size, far smaller than those required for conventional X-ray diffraction. Microcrystal electron diffraction (MicroED) thus allows materials that appear as powders in X-ray methods to be treated as usable single crystals.^{1, 2}

Although strong electron–matter interactions complicate intensity analysis compared to X-ray diffraction, MicroED has emerged as a highly effective method for solving diverse structures with good accuracy.3 Over the past decade, it has been successfully applied to small inorganic compounds³ , organic molecules^{1, 4}, extended frameworks^{2, 5}, pharmaceutical drugs⁶ , and biomolecules of relatively low molecular weight that lie beyond the reach of conventional cryoEM imaging.

MicroED complements X-ray and neutron diffraction by extending structural studies into previously inaccessible regimes, bridging gaps between techniques. Its versatility is already reshaping approaches to crystallography, offering researchers a powerful means of studying scarce, fragile, or nanosized samples.⁷

Looking ahead, the ability of MicroED to uncover structural details at the nanoscale holds great promise for fields as varied as drug discovery, molecular electronics, and the development of novel quantum materials.