Author Archive

August Crystal Clear: A Crystal Hedgehog

This hedgehog is actually a barite crystal, grown for 48 hours at pH 12.5

This hedgehog is actually a barite crystal, grown for 48 hours at pH 12.5 in hydrogen peroxide

This month’s crystal clear looks decidedly like a hedgehog!

In fact this is a BaSO4 particle grown using H2O2 to control particle morphology. Published in Issue 16 of CrystEngComm the paper describes the growth of BaSO4 crystals and proposes an interesting growth mechanism via selective adsorption of intermediates HO2, O22- and O2, generated from the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide during the reaction.

The team from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences were looking to control the morphology of barite without affecting crystal purity. Barite is a material with a wide range of applications, the largest being in drilling fluids (used during oil and gas exploration) and also as a paint and plastic additive as well as application in medicine.

By changing the concentration of H2O2 and varying reaction pH the team were able to control crystal morphology. Download the article for free to find out how the team achieved the shape control and see their SEM images revealing the growth of the structures.

Hydrogen peroxide triggered morphological evolution of barium sulfate crystals under basic conditions
Xiao-Hui Zhang, Feng-Wen Yan, Cun-Yue Guo, Feng-Bo Li, Zhi-Jun Huang and Guo-Qing Yuan
CrystEngComm, 2012, 14, 5267-5273

 

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Highlights from themed issues on ionic liquids

                

The field of ionic liquids has seen phenomenal growth in recent years, with the topic spanning a variety of disciplines across the chemical sciences. The recent themed issues from ChemComm, PCCP and CrystEngComm showcase some of the latest developments from a range of scientific subjects utilising the unique properties of ionic liquids.

Highlights from these themed issues include the articles below, which are free to download until the 24th August. You can also access the full themed issues by clicking on the buttons above.

  Click here to access the full list of articles

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Facile, economical and magnetically recoverable photo-Fenton’s reagent

Zhijun Luo, Xiangyang Wu et al. have recently developed a facile one-step route to generate magnetite/carboxylate-rich carbon spheres exhibiting excellent photodegradation properties, without the need of H2O2 or UV light.

Wastewater can contain many contaminants including a wide range of organic material; the photo-Fenton reaction is a highly efficient way to oxidise these pollutants using Fe3+, H2O2 and UV light to generate .OH radicals.

The materials reported here are highly water-dispersible, easy to make and operate under visible light across a wide pH range. The magnetite/carboxylate-rich carbon spheres can also be recovered magnetically making this a convenient reaction to use.

A schematic illustration of the magnetite/carboxylate-rich carbon spheres (MCRCS) generating hydroxyl radicals under visible light in water.

 

You can take a look at how the particles particles behave under applied magnetic fields in these videos, pure nano magnetite in water and magnetite/carboxylate-rich carbon spheres in water.

You can also download the full communication, which is free to access for 4 weeks
A visible-light-driven solid state photo-Fenton reagent based on magnetite/carboxylate-rich carbon spheres
Zhijun Luo, Hongjun Tang, Lingling Qu, Tingting Han and Xiangyang Wu

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July Crystal Clear: Crystal Cavern

An image taken through an optical microscope of L-arginine acetate grown using a 'Metal-Assisted and Microwave-Accelerated Evaporative Crystallization’ process.

The beautiful image in this month’s crystal clear isn’t actually a crystal cavern. It is crystals of L-arginine acetate grown using a new crystallisation technique. The crystals are of particular interest in non-linear optics given their second harmonic generation properties.

The Aslan Research Group have developed a new crystallisation method to grow L-arginine acetate crystals much faster than the previously reported cooling/evaporation method. The Metal-Assisted and Microwave-Accelerated Evaporative Crystallization process uses silver island films and low power microwave heating to grow the crystals quickly. The team also investigated functionalising the metal nucleation surface to see if this enhanced crystal growth. 

The image shown here is of the crystals created using bare silver island films and microwaves, the rest of the teams results, including full details of their growth process can be found in Issue 14 of CrystEngComm

Rapid crystallization of L-arginine acetate on engineered surfaces using metal-assisted and microwave-accelerated evaporative crystallization
Melissa A. Pinard, Tsehai A. J. Grell, Danielle Pettis, Muzaffer Mohammed and Kadir Aslan

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This months CrystEngSelects

Here is this month’s selection of Advance Articles and Accepted Manuscripts of interest to crystal engineers across RSC Journals

Articles are chosen from:
ChemComm,
Chemical Science,
CrystEngComm,
Dalton Transactions,
Journal of Materials Chemistry,
Nanoscale,
New Journal of Chemistry,
RSC Advances.

CLick here to expand the full list

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Competing cocrystals: Hydrogen-bonding vs. Halogen-bonding

Tomislav Friscic and colleagues report a cocrystal system that bonds by either hydrogen or halogen bonding depending on the stoichiometric ratio of the two components of the crystal. Interactions within crystal structures such as hydrogen bonding, ionic bonds, van der Waals forces and pi-interactions determine a material’s structure and properties.

Stoichiometric ratio of methyldiphenylphosphine oxide and p-diiodotetrafluorobenzene determines whether the resulting cocrystal will display hydrogen or halogen bonds

Understanding these interactions and engineering crystals with specific structures is important, the ability to switch the  interaction between hydrogen and halogen bonds by altering the ratio of molecules is an interesting discovery and helps establish the role halogen bonds play in molecular self-assembly.

Switching between halogen- and hydrogen-bonding in stoichiometric variations of a cocrystal of a phosphine oxide
Se Ye Oh, Christopher W. Nickels, Felipe Garcia, William Jones and Tomislav Friščić

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Advisory Board Member Lee Cronin wins Corday Morgan Prize

Lee Cronin is the Gardiner Professor of Chemistry at the School of Chemistry, University of Glasgow and on the Advisory Board of CrystEngComm.

The RSC recognises outstanding members of the chemical science community through its wide range of awards, you can see the full list of RSC 2012 winners here.

Lee is recognized for his creative studies in the field of inorganic chemistry, specifically the self-assembly and self-organization of inorganic molecules and the engineering of complex systems leading to the emergence of system-level behaviours.

His award citation is for “his outstanding work on the self-assembly of inorganic molecules and the engineering of complex systems”. Congratulations Lee from all at CrystEngComm!

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CrystEngComm impact factor released!

CrystEngCommThe 2011 Journal Citation Reports ® (Thomson Reuters, 2012) have been released and CrystEngComm has received a 5 year impact factor* of 4.02 and an Immediacy Index** of 0.844, the highest Immediacy Index for any crystal engineering journal!

We would like to thank all our authors, readers and referees who have contributed towards this success. Our thanks also go to our Editorial and Advisory Board Members and our Associate Editors for all their hard work and dedication to the journal.

A full list of RSC successes can be found at the RSC Impact Factor release.

For more information about CrystEngComm, including how to submit your research, check out the journal homepage.

*A 5-year impact factor is the average number of times articles from a journal published in the past five years have been cited in the JCR year. It is calculated by taking the number of citations in the JCR year to articles published in the preceding 5 years and dividing by the number of articles published in the previous 5 years.

** The Immediacy Index is a measure of how topical and urgent work published in a scientific journal is. It is measured by dividing the number of citations made to articles in a journal in a given year by the number of citeable articles published in the journal for the same year.

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There’s still just time to register for Crystallisation – A Biological Perspective: Faraday Discussion 159

There’s still just time to register for Crystallisation – A  Biological Perspective: Faraday Discussion 159  – by the deadline date of 22 June.

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If you are working in the areas of biomineralisation, biomimetic crystallisation, nucleation or crystal growth, then you will benefit from joining this discussion with top experts in the field.

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Taking part in a Faraday Discussion means that your own work will get better known, as all research papers and comments are recorded for publication after the event.

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Registration is quick and simple via our online booking system, so act today.

Come and explore the controversial new evidence of pre-nucleation clusters and discuss this apparent divergence from classical nucleation theory.

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June Crystal Clear: Euro 2012 Crystal

A titanium microsphere, used as the starting material to make hollow whisker balls

With Euro 2012 now well under away this month’s crystal clear couldn’t be more apt – a crystal soccer ball. The paper, from Issue 12 of CrystEngComm, reports the generation of highly crystalline hollow whisker balls.

Using the KCl flux cooling method, the team were able to grow highly crystalline K2Ti6O13 whiskers from the centres of titanium microspheres. The ultra-long whiskers grew on a TiO2 layer, leaving the centre of the sphere hollow and creating a bi-layer hollow whisker ball structure.

The team also used Ti powders as a starting material for the flux process and found this produced significantly different structures, for more details of the teams procedure and some remarkable images of their unique balls, download their article below for free.

Growth of ultralong potassium titanate whiskers by the KCl flux method with metallic titanium materials
Sayaka Suzuki, Katsuya Teshima, Mizuho Kiyohara, Hideya Kamikawa, Kunio Yubuta, Toetsu Shishido and Shuji Oishi
CrystEngComm, 2012,14, 4176-4180
DOI: 10.1039/C2CE00010E

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