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Project

Deciphering defects in Metal-Organic Framework nanocrystals using electron diffuse scattering analyses.

The study of disorder has become a major aspect in the engineering of Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) since materials scientists recognised the strong influence of structural imperfections on MOFs functional properties. As the interest in MOFs' defect engineering grows exponentially, this practice becomes more and more precise in tailoring the type and distribution of defects. However, the structural characterisation possibilities still cannot guarantee an adequate quantitative precision. This is mainly due to the limited development of total scattering single crystal analyses on nanocrystals, which are a vast majority of the employed MOFs. My project aims to fill this gap by developing a novel method based on the use of electron diffuse scattering from Transmission Electron Microscopy analyses. The proposed method will be applied on a heterogeneous set of widely used nano-MOFs with unknown defects. This will at the same time define unambiguously their defect structures for the first time and validate the method to make it available for use in any research group. The acquired information will eventually be combined with the one achievable by bulk analyses to compensate for the limited statistical representativeness of single crystal analyses. This will allow to obtain a complete description of these materials' structure and to define general guidelines for the investigation of defects in nanomaterials by using methods available for the general use.
Date:1 Oct 2019 →  30 Sep 2022
Keywords:NANOMATERIALS
Disciplines:Crystallography, Structural analysis, Coordination chemistry, Chemical crystallography, Functional materials
Project type:Collaboration project