High-Power Near-Concentric Fabry-Perot Cavity for Phase Contrast Electron Microscopy
Abstract
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) of vitrified biological macromolecules (cryo-EM) is limited by the weak phase contrast signal that is available from such samples. Using a phase plate would thus substantially improve the signal-to-noise ratio. We have previously demonstrated the use of a high-power Fabry-Perot cavity as a phase plate for TEM. We now report improvements to our laser cavity that allow us to achieve record continuous-wave intensities of over 450 GW/cm, sufficient to produce the optimal 90{\deg} phase shift for 300 keV electrons. In addition, we have performed the first cryo-EM reconstruction using a laser phase plate, demonstrating that the stability of this laser phase plate is sufficient for use during standard cryo-EM data collection.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2012.08638,
title = {High-Power Near-Concentric Fabry-Perot Cavity for Phase Contrast Electron Microscopy},
author = {Carter Turnbaugh and Jeremy J. Axelrod and Sara L. Campbell and Jeske Y. Dioquino and Petar N. Petrov and Jonathan Remis and Osip Schwartz and Zanlin Yu and Yifan Cheng and Robert M. Glaeser and Holger Mueller},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.08638},
year = {2021}
}