Re-examining mechanisms of radiation damage in organic specimens

Radiation damage to organic specimens is the major limiting factor in high resolution electron microscopy studies of biological systems. Electron beam irradiation compromises resolution by altering chemical microstructure, resulting in local mass loss and volume shrinkage in a specimen. All significant mass loss is thought to occur prior to a total incident dose of 50 electrons/ square angstrom If this is the case it is hard to reconcile the observation that images must be recorded at doses of less than 100 el/Å in order to avoid excessive mass loss and shrinkage while microanalytical (EDS and EELS) studies of the same tissue are routinely carried out at doses of 104 - 105el/Å2. Also, since most workers typically use either low dose (for imaging) or high dose (for microapalysis) there are apparently no studies in the literature which attempt to follow the process of radiation damage between these two extremes.We have chosen to investigate mass loss in polymer embedding resins such as are routinely used for TEM imaging as well as for X ray microanalytical applications.