Cryo-EM combined with image deconvolution to determine ZIF-8 crystal structure

Abstract Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are crystalline porous materials with tunable properties, exhibiting great potential in gas adsorption, separation and catalysis.[1, 2] It is challenging to visualize MOFs with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) due to their inherent instability under electron beam irradiation. Here, we employ cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to capture images of MOF ZIF-8, revealing inverted-space structural information at a resolution of up to about 1.7 Å and enhancing its critical electron dose to around 20 e-/Å2. In addition, it is confirmed by electron-beam irradiation experiments that the high voltage could effectively mitigate the radiolysis, and the structure of ZIF-8 is more stable along the [100] direction under electron beam irradiation. Meanwhile, since the high-resolution electron microscope images is modulated by contrast transfer function (CTF) and it is difficult to determine the positions corresponding to the atomic columns directly from the images. We employ image deconvolution to eliminate the impact of CTF and obtain the structural images of ZIF-8. As a result, the heavy atom Zn and the organic imidazole ring within the organic framework can be distinguished from structural images.