The promise of liquid-helium cooling for scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) is increasingly being recognized, generating tremendous excitement across the microscopy and quantum materials communities. A recent Nature news feature, “This super-cold microscope could spur a quantum revolution”, highlights the growing momentum behind ultralow-temperature electron microscopy.
Our team has developed ultrastable liquid-helium cryogenic cooling capabilities that enable new atomic-scale insights into quantum matter and devices. By combining very low sample temperatures with the spatial resolution of STEM, we can probe structural and electronic phenomena that are difficult to access using conventional room-temperature measurements.
Recent advances in instrument stability, atomic-resolution imaging, and cryogenic microscopy are opening exciting opportunities to visualize emergent states and understand their response to temperature and other external controls.
Recent advances and applications of liquid-helium cryogenic electron microscopy:
- Nanoscale polar textures in quantum paraelectric SrTiO₃ — Nature (2026)
- Cryogenic microscopy instrumentation — PNAS (2025)
- Helium-cooled cryogenic STEM imaging and ptychography — Microscopy and Microanalysis (2026)
- Related cryogenic electron microscopy preprint — arXiv
- Low-temperature materials research — Physical Review B (2026)