Hydrogen positions in single nanocrystals revealed by electron diffraction

The localization of hydrogen atoms is an essential part of crystal structure analysis, but it is difficult because of their small scattering power. We report the direct localization of hydrogen atoms in nanocrystalline materials, achieved using the recently developed approach of dynamical refinement of precession electron diffraction tomography data. We used this method to locate hydrogen atoms in both an organic (paracetamol) and an inorganic (framework cobalt aluminophosphate) material. The results demonstrate that the technique can reliably reveal fine structural details, including the positions of hydrogen atoms in single crystals with micro- to nanosized dimensions.

Paracetamol PEDT structure analysis and PEDT structure analysis of CAP.

¹Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Na Slovance 2, 182 21 Prague 8, Czech Republic
²CRISMAT (Laboratoire de Cristallographie et Sciences des Matériaux), Normandie Université, ENSICAEN (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Ingénieurs de Caen), UNICAEN (Université de Caen), CNRS UMR 6508, 6 Bd Maréchal Juin, F-14050 Caen, France. ³LCS (Laboratoire Catalyse et Spectrochimie), Normandie Université, ENSICAEN, UNICAEN, CNRS UMR 6506, 6 Bd Maréchal Juin, F-14050 Caen, France.