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Updated: Dec 20, 2025

Author Spotlight: Experimental Approaches for the Synthesis of Low-Valent Metal-Organic Frameworks from Multitopic Phosphine Linkers
Published on: May 12, 2023
Imaging the node-linker coordination in the bulk and local structures of metal-organic frameworks
Boyuan Shen1, Xiao Chen2, Kui Shen3
1Beijing Key Laboratory of Green Chemical Reaction Engineering and Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
Abstract:
Porous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have shown wide applications in catalysis, gas storage and separation due to their highly tunable porosity, connectivity and local structures. However, the electron-beam sensitivity of MOFs makes it difficult to achieve the atomic imaging of their bulk and local structures under (scanning) transmission electron microscopy ((S)TEM) to study their structure-property relations. Here, we report the low-dose imaging of a beam-sensitive MOF, MIL-101, under a Cs-corrected STEM based on the integrated differential phase contrast (iDPC) technique. The images resolve the coordination of Cr nodes and organic linkers inside the frameworks with an information transfer of ~1.8Å. The local structures in MIL-101 are also revealed under iDPC-STEM, including the surfaces, interfaces and defects. These results provide an extensible method to image various beam-sensitive materials with ultrahigh resolution, and unravel the whole framework architectures for further defect and surface engineering of MOFs towards tailored functions.
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