Electron microscopy offers a valuable route to the imaging of specimens from the microscale potentially to the atomic scale. In both scanning and transmission electron microscopes there is opportunity to combine imaging with spectroscopy opening the avenue to spatially resolved chemical analysis.

However, as with all techniques, care needs to be taken that the analysis is not causing unwanted changes to the specimen. Nanomaterials and chemical products often contain hard-soft interfaces (e.g., polymer coatings on nanoparticles) or are liquid dispersed (e.g., emulsions and products such as sunblocks), which would either be damaged by an electron beam under standard operating procedures or require dehydration. An alternative is to use sample preparation and microscope conditions more commonly used for biological specimens, to freeze the samples prior to analysis and use low electron dose imaging and analysis conditions. In this presentation we will look at a range of samples, from nanoparticles to pharmaceuticals through to emulsions and in-use products using electron microscopy approaches with the aim of representative imaging and analysis.