were vitrified and imaged at the Baylor College of Medicine Cryo-Electron
Microscopy Core Facility (BCM, Houston, TX). Quantifoil R2/1 + Cu
200 mesh holey carbon grids were pretreated with a 45 s air-glow discharge
to make the carbon surface hydrophilic. Alongside these grids, Quantifoil
R2/1 200Cu + 4 nm thin carbon grids were also glow discharged for
10 s to test the efficacy of the added layer of continuous carbon
with binding the NP. Vitrification was performed using a Vitrobot
Mark IV (FEI, Hillsboro, OR) operated at 18 °C and 100% humidity.
Each grid had 3 μL of NP sample applied to it and was blotted
for 1–3 s before being immediately submerged in liquid ethane.
The frozen grids were then transferred into a JEOL 3200FS microscope
(JEOL) outfitted with a Gatan K2 Summit 4k × 4k direct detector
(Gatan, Pleasanton, CA) and a postcolumn energy filter set to 30 eV.
Before imaging, the microscope was carefully aligned to prevent any
beam-induced aberrations or astigmatism that can negatively impact
image quality. Images were collected at magnifications of 15,000×
and 30,000× with respective pixel sizes of 2.392 and 1.232 Å.
Images were collected using an exposure time of 1 s with an approximate
dose rate of ∼20e–/Å2/s per
image.