CrystEngComm Blog

Organic crystals with never-before-seen curved fractal structures have been discovered by researchers in China. They used the unusual shapes to design a dress, whose striking patterns won a national fashion competition.

Guoqing Zhang, Xuepeng Zhang and their team at the University of Science and Technology of China first intended to construct a series of organic ligands for water-based acrylic paints. By performing a routine Claisen condensation reaction between a ketone and an ester, they obtained a number of pyridine-substituted β-diketone compounds as fluffy crystals, with varying positions of nitrogen-substitution in the pyridine ring.

Interested? The full story can be read in Chemistry World.

The original article can be read below and is free to access until 9^th June 2017:

Curved fractal structures of pyridine-substituted β-diketone crystals
Zongzheng Qian, Dongxue Li, Tongqing Xie, Xuepeng Zhang,* Yang He, Yuejie Ai and Guoqing Zhang*
CrystEngComm, 2017, 19, 2283-2287
DOI:10.1039/C7CE00462A