By Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Beam sensitive materials are a challenging class of materials to be investigated by EDT, unfortunately, a lot of crystalline materials with high scientific and commercial impact belong to this category. Dealing with Material Sciences, the most promising ones are zeolites and MetallOrgainc Framework (MOF), while, concerning organic compounds, pharmaceutical substances and proteins are definitely the most interesting ones. In addition to beam sensitivity, a common issue in structure investigation of these materials is the difficulty in obtaining large single crystals. Therefore, EDT is a perfect candidate for a breakthrough in crystal structure analysis. We developed a fast EDT procedure that, combined with a new generation single electron diffraction camera (MEDIPIX2 detector acquired thanks to a Regione Toscana contribution), allows fast data collection with dose lower that 0.05 e/(Å 2 s). In this way, all the materials described above can be studied with EDT before the amorphization by the electron beam occurs and on a scale never reached by other diffraction techniques (Simancas et al. 2016).
