a novel method for high-fidelity electron microscopy imaging was developed by the research team led by Professor Han Yu at SCUT’s Center for Electron Microscopy. 

Their findings were published in Nature under the title “High-fidelity identification of guest species in porous materials”on May 20.

Crystalline porous materials, such as zeolites and metal–organic frameworks, are widely used in catalysis, separation, and sensing, with their performance largely governed by the behavior of guest molecules within the pores.

However, these light-element guest molecules are typically small in size, low in abundance, and heterogeneously distributed, making their precise identification highly challenging. Existing phase-contrast imaging methods often generate artifacts within the pores, which can lead to misidentification of guest molecules.

This study develops Gaussian-apodized single-sideband electron ptychography (GASSB-Ptycho), which optimizes the imaging function through Gaussian weighting in reciprocal space. By effectively suppressing pore-confined artifacts, GASSB-Ptycho enables high-fidelity and chemically interpretable microscopy.

This method allows catalytically active species in metal–zeolite systems to be precisely identified and provides a broadly applicable approach for high-fidelity visualization of local structures in complex porous materials.