1
|
Ge M, Yang T, Wang Y, Carraro F, Liang W, Doonan C, Falcaro P, Zheng H, Zou X, Huang Z. On the completeness of three-dimensional electron diffraction data for structural analysis of metal-organic frameworks. Faraday Discuss 2021; 231:66-80. [PMID: 34227643 DOI: 10.1039/d1fd00020a] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
Abstract
Three-dimensional electron diffraction (3DED) has been proven as an effective and accurate method for structure determination of nano-sized crystals. In the past decade, the crystal structures of various new complex metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been revealed by 3DED, which has been the key to understand their properties. However, due to the design of transmission electron microscopes (TEMs), one drawback of 3DED experiments is the limited tilt range of goniometers, which often leads to incomplete 3DED data, particularly when the crystal symmetry is low. This drawback can be overcome by high throughput data collection using continuous rotation electron diffraction (cRED), where data from a large number of crystals can be collected and merged. Here, we investigate the effects of improving completeness on structural analysis of MOFs. We use ZIF-EC1, a zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF), as an example. ZIF-EC1 crystallizes in a monoclinic system with a plate-like morphology. cRED data of ZIF-EC1 with different completeness and resolution were analyzed. The data completeness increased to 92.0% by merging ten datasets. Although the structures could be solved from individual datasets with a completeness as low as 44.5% and refined to a high precision (better than 0.04 Å), we demonstrate that a high data completeness could improve the structural model, especially on the electrostatic potential map. We further discuss the strategy adopted during data merging. We also show that ZIF-EC1 doped with cobalt can act as an efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reactions.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Meng Ge
- Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry, Stockholm University, Stockholm SE-106 91, Sweden.
| | - Taimin Yang
- Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry, Stockholm University, Stockholm SE-106 91, Sweden.
| | - Yanzhi Wang
- Key Laboratory of Applied Surface and Colloid Chemistry, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710119, China
| | - Francesco Carraro
- Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, Graz University of Technology, Stremayrgasse 9, 8010 Graz, Austria
| | - Weibin Liang
- Department of Chemistry and the Centre for Advanced Nanomaterials, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, 5005 South Australia, Australia
| | - Christian Doonan
- Department of Chemistry and the Centre for Advanced Nanomaterials, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, 5005 South Australia, Australia
| | - Paolo Falcaro
- Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, Graz University of Technology, Stremayrgasse 9, 8010 Graz, Austria
| | - Haoquan Zheng
- Key Laboratory of Applied Surface and Colloid Chemistry, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710119, China
| | - Xiaodong Zou
- Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry, Stockholm University, Stockholm SE-106 91, Sweden.
| | - Zhehao Huang
- Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry, Stockholm University, Stockholm SE-106 91, Sweden.
| |
Collapse
|
2
|
Mugnaioli E, Lanza AE, Bortolozzi G, Righi L, Merlini M, Cappello V, Marini L, Athanassiou A, Gemmi M. Electron Diffraction on Flash-Frozen Cowlesite Reveals the Structure of the First Two-Dimensional Natural Zeolite. ACS Cent Sci 2020; 6:1578-1586. [PMID: 32999933 PMCID: PMC7517411 DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.9b01100] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/28/2019] [Indexed: 05/24/2023]
Abstract
Cowlesite, ideally Ca6Al12Si18O60·36H2O, is to date the only natural zeolite whose structure could not be determined by X-ray methods. In this paper, we present the ab initio structure determination of this mineral obtained by three-dimensional (3D) electron diffraction data collected from single-crystal domains of a few hundreds of nanometers. The structure of cowlesite consists of an alternation of rigid zeolitic layers and low-density interlayers supported by water and cations. This makes cowlesite the only two-dimensional (2D) zeolite known in nature. When cowlesite gets in contact with a transmission electron microscope vacuum, a phase transition to a conventional 3D zeolite framework occurs in few seconds. The original cowlesite structure could be preserved only by adopting a cryo-plunging sample preparation protocol usually employed for macromolecular samples. Such a protocol allows the investigation by 3D electron diffraction of very hydrated and very beam-sensitive inorganic materials, which were previously considered intractable by transmission electron microscopy crystallographic methods.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Enrico Mugnaioli
- Center
for Nanotechnology Innovation@NEST, Istituto
Italiano di Tecnologia, Piazza San Silvestro 12, 56127 Pisa, Italy
| | - Arianna E. Lanza
- Center
for Nanotechnology Innovation@NEST, Istituto
Italiano di Tecnologia, Piazza San Silvestro 12, 56127 Pisa, Italy
| | - Giorgio Bortolozzi
- Associazione
Micromineralogica Italiana (AMI), via Gioconda 3, 26100 Cremona, Italy
| | - Lara Righi
- Department
of Chemistry, Life Sciences and Environmental Sustainability, University of Parma, Parco Area delle Scienze 17/A, Parma, 43124, Italy
- IMEM-CNR, Parco Area
delle Scienze 37/A, 43123 Parma, Italy
| | - Marco Merlini
- Dipartimento
di Scienze della Terra, Università
degli Studi di Milano, Via Botticelli 23, 20133 Milano, Italy
| | - Valentina Cappello
- Center
for Nanotechnology Innovation@NEST, Istituto
Italiano di Tecnologia, Piazza San Silvestro 12, 56127 Pisa, Italy
| | - Lara Marini
- Smart Materials, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy
| | | | - Mauro Gemmi
- Center
for Nanotechnology Innovation@NEST, Istituto
Italiano di Tecnologia, Piazza San Silvestro 12, 56127 Pisa, Italy
| |
Collapse
|
3
|
Gemmi M, Mugnaioli E, Gorelik TE, Kolb U, Palatinus L, Boullay P, Hovmöller S, Abrahams JP. 3D Electron Diffraction: The Nanocrystallography Revolution. ACS Cent Sci 2019; 5:1315-1329. [PMID: 31482114 PMCID: PMC6716134 DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.9b00394] [Citation(s) in RCA: 177] [Impact Index Per Article: 35.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/17/2019] [Indexed: 05/20/2023]
Abstract
Crystallography of nanocrystalline materials has witnessed a true revolution in the past 10 years, thanks to the introduction of protocols for 3D acquisition and analysis of electron diffraction data. This method provides single-crystal data of structure solution and refinement quality, allowing the atomic structure determination of those materials that remained hitherto unknown because of their limited crystallinity. Several experimental protocols exist, which share the common idea of sampling a sequence of diffraction patterns while the crystal is tilted around a noncrystallographic axis, namely, the goniometer axis of the transmission electron microscope sample stage. This Outlook reviews most important 3D electron diffraction applications for different kinds of samples and problematics, related with both materials and life sciences. Structure refinement including dynamical scattering is also briefly discussed.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Mauro Gemmi
- Center
for Nanotechnology Innovation@NEST, Istituto
Italiano di Tecnologia, Piazza S. Silvestro 12, 56127 Pisa, Italy
| | - Enrico Mugnaioli
- Center
for Nanotechnology Innovation@NEST, Istituto
Italiano di Tecnologia, Piazza S. Silvestro 12, 56127 Pisa, Italy
| | - Tatiana E. Gorelik
- University
of Ulm, Central Facility for Electron Microscopy, Electron Microscopy
Group of Materials Science (EMMS), Albert Einstein Allee 11, 89081 Ulm, Germany
| | - Ute Kolb
- Institut
für Anorganische Chemie und Analytische Chemie, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Duesbergweg 10-14, 55128 Mainz, Germany
- Institut
für Angewandte Geowissenschaften, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Schnittspahnstraße 9, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany
| | - Lukas Palatinus
- Department
of Structure Analysis, Institute of Physics
of the CAS, Na Slovance 2, 182 21 Prague 8, Czechia
| | - Philippe Boullay
- CRISMAT,
Normandie Université, ENSICAEN, UNICAEN, CNRS UMR 6508, 6 Bd Maréchal Juin, F-14050 Cedex Caen, France
| | - Sven Hovmöller
- Inorganic
and Structural Chemistry, Department of Materials and Environmental
Chemistry, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Jan Pieter Abrahams
- Center
for Cellular Imaging and NanoAnalytics (C−CINA), Biozentrum, Basel University, Mattenstrasse 26, CH-4058 Basel, Switzerland
- Department
of Biology and Chemistry, Paul Scherrer
Institut (PSI), CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland
- Leiden
Institute of Biology, Leiden University, Sylviusweg 72, 2333 BE Leiden, The Netherlands
| |
Collapse
|