Tracking 3D picometer-scale motions of single nanoparticles with high-energy electron probes

Abstract

We observed the high-speed anisotropic motion of an individual gold nanoparticle in 3D at the picometer scale using a high-energy electron probe. Diffracted electron tracking (DET) using the electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD) patterns of labeled nanoparticles under wet-SEM allowed us to super-accurately measure the time-resolved 3D motion of individual nanoparticles in aqueous conditions. The highly precise DET data corresponded to the 3D anisotropic log-normal Gaussian distributions over time at the millisecond scale.