Mechanical cleaning of graphene using in situ electron microscopy
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An MM3A-EM micromanipulator can sweep graphene atomically clean inside the electron microscope, an Erlangen group watching the surface recover in real time.
The authors use an MM3A-EM micromanipulator inside the electron microscope to mechanically sweep adsorbed contamination from graphene, recovering atomically clean surfaces while imaging the process in real time. The work demonstrates that careful nanomechanical contact — not just chemistry — can restore pristine 2D-material surfaces, and that the whole procedure can be observed and controlled directly under the beam.
