High-Resolution Cryo-Scanning Electron Microscopy of Macromolecular Complexes

The beauty of Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) is its power to describe and integrate structural details, mainly surface related details, within the context of a complex system. Its unique ability compared to other Electron Microscopy techniques (STEM & TEM) is that handling and imaging of bulk samples is in principal possible and hence sectioning, thinning or replicating of the specimen is not essential when surfaces structures are to be investigated. With the introduction of Field Emission SEM (FESEM), especially in combination with improvements to the signal detection efficiency ("in-lens" detection and new type of detectors), high resolution SEM (HRSEM) has become a powerful approach to describe structural details even down to macromolecular dimensions (1-2nm) for structural studies in Biology and soft-material science.