Structure of metal-organic framework nanocrystals obtained from electron diffraction data by iterative phase retrieval

We demonstrate the iterative phase retrieval of DUT-8(Ni) metal-organic framework (MOF) nanocrystals using high-resolution electron diffraction data. The reconstructed images show contrast features associated with the crystal structure, revealing well-resolved metal-containing rows with interpretable shifts. These shifts correspond to previously reported crystal structure disorder within the MOF. Furthermore, electron diffraction patterns display modulations in the low-resolution region, indicative of the rectangular crystal shape. Based on these data, we also successfully reconstructed the crystal shape image, which closely matched the observed form of the crystal.