Progress of Zeolite Structural Analysis Based on Transmission Electron Microscopy

Transmission electron microscope has become a powerful tool to solve new zeolite structures, analyze structural defects and study active sites. It has two main functions, imaging and diffraction, including transmission/scanning transmission electron microscopy imaging, selected-area electron diffraction and three-dimensional electron diffraction. Multiple methods were usually combined for a thorough analysis. In recent years, there are breakthrough improvements on hardware of electron microscopes, especially the well-developed spherical aberration correctors and a variety of sensitive detectors, as well as developments of image processing methods. As a result, atomic level imaging of beam sensitive materials such as zeolites has been achievable. Moreover, in situ electron microscopy study of zeolite is also on the way, for a better understanding of zeolites growth and catalytic reaction. In this review we focus on the recent research progresses of zeolites studied by electron microscopy, including new structure analysis, handedness determination, metal@zeolites and so on.