Bulk and Local Structures of Metal-organic Frameworks Unravelled by High-resolution Electron Microscopy

Overview

Journal Commun Chem

Publisher Springer Nature

Specialty Chemistry

Date 2023 Jan 27

PMID 36703329

Authors

Lingmei Liu

Daliang Zhang

Yihan Zhu

Yu Han

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The periodic bulk structures of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) can be solved by diffraction-based techniques; however, their non-periodic local structures-such as crystal surfaces, grain boundaries, defects, and guest molecules-have long been elusive due to a lack of suitable characterization tools. Recent advances in (scanning) transmission electron microscopy ((S)TEM) has made it possible to probe the local structures of MOFs at atomic resolution. In this article, we discuss why high-resolution (S)TEM of MOFs is challenging and how the new low-dose techniques overcome this challenge, and we review various MOF structural features observed by (S)TEM and important insights gained from these observations. Our discussions focus on real-space imaging, excluding other TEM-related characterization techniques (e.g. electron diffraction and spectroscopy).

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