Ultrafast electron diffraction imaging of gas-phase molecules

Knowledge of molecular structure is paramount in understanding, and ultimately influencing, chemical reactivity. For nearly a century, diffractive imaging has been used to identify the structures of many biologically-relevant gas-phase molecules with atomic (i.e., Angstrom, angstrom; 1 angstrom = 10(-10) m) spatial resolution. Unraveling the mechanisms of chemical reactions requires the capability to record multiple well-resolved snapshots of the molecular structure as it is evolving on the nuclear (i.e., femtosecond, fs; 1fs = 10(-15) s) timescale. We present the latest, state-of-the-art ultrafast electron diffraction methods used to retrieve the molecular structure of gas-phase molecules with Angstrom and femtosecond spatio-temporal resolution. We first provide a historical and theoretical background to elastic electron scattering in its application to structural retrieval, followed by details of field-free and field-dressed ultrafast electron diffraction techniques. We discuss the application of these ultrafast methods to time-resolving chemical reactions in real-time, before providing a future outlook of the field and the challenges that exist today and in the future.