Characterization of metal-organic frameworks by transmission electron microscopy

ABSTRACT To address the increasing energy consumption and serious environmental problems, it is critical to develop efficient and clean energy conversion and storage devices. Among various categories of materials, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are one of the promising candidates that can realize the practical application of these devices. Therefore, it has been recognized that revealing the composition-structure-property relationship of MOFs by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) can offer some guidelines for designing novel materials with desirable properties. Nevertheless, owing to their organic parts, MOFs are too beam sensitive to be characterized by high energy electrons. To resolve this problem, various advanced techniques have been developed to accomplish the static and dynamic MOFs characterizations. Herein, we made a brief summary of the updated progress on characterization of MOFs by TEM until now, and revealed the key issues associated with static and dynamic TEM characterization of MOFs. Graphical Abstract