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Hydrocarbon contamination plagues high-resolution and analytical electronmicroscopy by depositing carbonaceous layers onto surfaces during electronirradiation, which can render carefully prepared specimens useless. Increasedspecimen thickness degrades resolution with beam broadening alongside loss ofcontrast. The large inelastic cross-section of carbon hampers accurate atomicspecies detection. Oxygen and water molecules pose problems of lattice damageby chemically etching the specimen during imaging. These constraints onhigh-resolution and spectroscopic imaging demand clean, high-vacuum microscopeswith dry pumps. Here, we present an open-hardware design of a high-vacuummanifold for transmission electron microscopy (TEM) holders to mitigatehydrocarbon and residual species exposure. We quantitatively show that TEMholders are inherently dirty and introduce a range of unwanted chemicalspecies. Overnight storage in our manifold reduces contaminants by 1-2 ordersof magnitude and promotes 2-4 times faster vacuum recovery. A built-in bakeoutsystem further reduces contaminants partial pressure to below $10^{-10}$ Torr(~4 orders of magnitude down from ambient storage) and alleviates monolayeradsorption during a typical TEM experiment. We determine that bakeout of TEMholder with specimen held therein is the optimal cleaning method. Ourhigh-vacuum manifold design is published with open-source blueprints, partslist, and cost.

Contamination of TEM Holders Quantified and Mitigated with Open-Hardware, High-Vacuum Bakeout System