Graphene oxide supported microwell grids for ice-thickness controlled cryo-EM

Abstract

Cryogenic electron microscope (cryo-EM) has emerged as the preferred method to determine three-dimensional (3D) structures of protein molecules. Despite major advances in the overall cryo-EM workflow, the process of preparing vitrified samples with controlled ice-thickness persists as the major bottleneck for the efficient and thigh-throughput structure analysis by cryo-EM. Herein, we develop the advanced silicon (Si) chip-based device which has a regular array of micropatterned holes with a graphene oxide (GO) window on free-standing silicon nitride (SixNy) by combining microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technique and 2D nanosheet transfer method.