CrystEngComm Blog

We are delighted to announce the winner of the CrystEngComm Outstanding Paper Award, 2023!

First launched in 2022, the Outstanding Paper Award is an award aimed at recognising the high-quality work published in CrystEngComm from the previous year, acknowledging the excellence of the paper as a whole and recognising the contributions of all the authors.

Congratulations to the winners of the CrystEngComm Outstanding Paper Award 2023, as selected by the Editorial Board, for their work on Spontaneous resolution of two chiral metal–organic frameworks through local geometric and lattice frustration effects: Hunter J. Windsor, Cameron J. Kepert and Lauren K. Macreadie.

The authors presented two chiral metal–organic frameworks that are differentiated by their Cd-centred helical twists and are prepared by spontaneous chiral resolution from rigid, aliphatic, and achiral precursors.

Read the full outstanding article:

Spontaneous resolution of two chiral metal–organic frameworks through local geometric and lattice frustration effects Hunter J. Windsor, Cameron J. Kepert and Lauren K. Macreadie CrystEngComm, 2023, 25, 5428-5435

Meet the authors of this Outstanding Paper

 Hunter J. Windsor

Hunter Windsor received his PhD in chemistry in 2022 from the University of Sydney. His research involved exploring spin crossover metal–organic frameworks and modulation of their magnetic properties through guest confinement. He is currently a postdoctoral research associate for Professor Les Field at the University of New South Wales where he is investigating the reactivity of small molecules such as carbon dioxide and acetylene with ruthenium-centred organometallic complexes. Hunter is passionate about teaching crystallography and is interested in developing new methods for crystallising reactive species that have otherwise eluded characterisation.

Cameron J. Kepert

Cameron Kepert is a Professor in the School of Chemistry at the University of Sydney. He received his B.Sc. (Hons) from the University of Western Australia, PhD from the Royal Institution of Great Britain/University of London and was a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford from 1995-1998. He is a recipient of the Australian Prime Minister’s Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year, the Le Fèvre Memorial Prize of the Australian Academy of Science, the Burrows Award and Rennie Medal of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. His research interests include nanoporous metal—organic framework materials, spin-crossover, molecular magnets, molecular conductors, and negative thermal expansion materials.

Lauren K. Macreadie

Dr Lauren Macreadie is an ARC DECRA fellow and a UNSW Scientia Fellow at the University of New South Wales and investigates how porous materials can be used to solve our key energy questions around hydrogen storage and transport, and chemical separations. Following the completion of her PhD at the CSIRO and Monash University in 2016, she worked at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, on water splitting MOF systems, followed by research with the CSIRO in Melbourne on MOFs as adsorbents for respiratory canisters with the Defense Science and Technology group. Lauren then became a lecturer at Massey University in New Zealand in 2020. In 2021 she began her DECRA fellowship at the University of Sydney and moved to UNSW in 2022.

Please join us in congratulating this year’s winners!

We are delighted to share with you our latest collection showcasing the articles behind the 2024 CrystEngComm covers.

This latest collection of recently published articles brings together all the cover articles published so far this year, which showcases the wide range of research found in the journal. Further articles will be added to this collection as they are published.

Full collection

Here is  a selection of some of the articles in the collection:

Nitro group and K+-based secondary building units for the self-assembly of 3D coordination polymers built on dinuclear dianionic helicate connectors Raúl Mendoza-Báez, Alan Molina-Renteria and Juan Olguín CrystEngComm, 2024, 26, 2346-2352	Outside front cover of issue 18
Pure organic TPB single crystal for direct X-ray detection Kai Jiang, Lingyan Xu, Rongjin Shang, Lu Liang, Yingming Wang, Zhentao Qin and Wanqi Jie CrystEngComm, 2024, 26, 2241-2247	Inside front cover of issue 17
Effect of grain coalescence on dislocation and stress in GaN films grown on nanoscale patterned sapphire substrates Zuojian Pan, Zhizhong Chen, Yiyong Chen, Haodong Zhang, Han Yang, Ling Hu, Xiangning Kang, Ye Yuan, Chuanyu Jia, Zhiwen Liang, Qi Wang, Guoyi Zhang and Bo Shen CrystEngComm, 2024,26, 620-630	Outside back cover of issue 5

We hope you enjoy these articles and the rest in the collection. Read these articles for free until 15^th July 2024.

Have you thought about highlighting your work on one of our covers? *

Covers provide a unique opportunity to amplify your research:

 Achieve greater visibility:

• Your article will be free to access for 6 weeks.
• We will give prominence to your article in the issue.
• We will give your research group additional promotion via our networks.
• We will include your article in the covers collection and in the cover gallery on our blog.

Showcase your research:

• We will highlight your cover on the journal table of contents.
• Your cover is included as the first page of your article PDF.
• We will share a high-resolution version of the cover for you to use in presentations or display at your institution.

If you are interested in showcasing your research on one of our covers, once your article has been accepted for publication please do contact the Editorial Team for further information: Crystengcomm@rsc.org

* Please note that authors are required to pay a fee for this service. Front covers are currently being offered at a reduced rate of just £250, while a back cover is typically £1000 (plus applicable taxes).

What a year 2023 was! CrystEngComm celebrated 25 volumes, over 1.2 million article downloads, over 575 articles published, including 23 Highlight review articles and 59 Communications, from 47 countries with three themed collections and four Editor’s Collections.

A celebration of 25 volumes of CrystEngComm

The publication of the 25^th volume of CrystEngComm in 2023 was another milestone for the journal. From the launch of CrystEngComm in 1999 as one of the first peer reviewed online-only chemistry journals, it has moved forward with increasing submissions, from being a journal with no issues, to monthly, then bimonthly and finally weekly publication, publishing almost 15,000 articles in 25 years, featuring authors from 105 countries across six continents. CrystEngComm truly is an international journal with an international readership, authorship and Editorial Board. To mark this exciting milestone for the journal in 2023 a collection of articles and highlights, representing some of the most highly-cited work across the areas of research published in CrystEngComm over the years was collated. Read the collection here.

Editorial Board

We were delighted to welcome two new members to the Editorial Board in 2023: Professor Bin Zhao, Nankai University, China and Professor Changquan Calvin Sun, University of Minnesota, USA.

Changquan Calvin Sun is Professor of Pharmaceutics at the University of Minnesota, USA, from which he received his PhD. in Pharmaceutics in 2000.  After spending 8 years in the pharmaceutical industry, he joined the Department of Pharmaceutics as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Full Professor in 2017.  Professor Sun’s research focuses on efficient formulation design of high-quality tablet products through the appropriate application of materials science and engineering principles. Two main areas of his current research are 1) crystal and particle engineering for superior pharmaceutical properties; and 2) fundamental understanding of pharmaceutical processes, including powder compaction.  He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).   Professor Sun received the 2019 Ralph Shangraw Memorial Award from the International Pharmaceutical Excipient Council (IPEC) and the 2022 David J. W. Grant Distinguished Scholar Award in Basic Pharmaceutics from the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Technology and Education (NIPTE).

Bin Zhao is a Distinguished Professor at Nankai University. He received his PhD degree from Nankai University in 2004 and has worked as a Full Professor at the Department of Chemistry since 2009. His current research interests focus on the construction of complicated metal clusters and structure, luminescence and catalysis of cluster-based coordination polymers, as well as their applications in the fields of energy, environment and health, such as the conversion and utilization of CO2, water splitting, luminescent probes etc. The related research won the support of the National Outstanding Youth Science Fund. Bin Zhao has published over 180 research papers and has won various awards including the National Hundred Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award (2006), the Chinese Chemical Society Prize for Young Scientists (2006), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (2007) and the Youth Science and Technology Innovation Leader (2017).

CrystEngComm Outstanding Paper Award

The first Outstanding Paper Award was awarded in 2023 and is a new award aimed at recognising the high-quality work published in CrystEngComm from the previous year, acknowledging the excellence of the paper as a whole and recognising the contributions of all the authors.

The winners of the CrystEngComm Outstanding Paper Award 2022, as selected by the Editorial Board for their work on Predicting pharmaceutical crystal morphology using Artificial Intelligence, were Matthew R. Wilkinson, Uriel Martinez-Hernandez, Laura K. Huggon, Chick C. Wilson and Bernardo Castro Dominguez.

The authors presented the use of artificial intelligence to predict the morphology of crystallizing active pharmaceutical ingredients, first using publicly available data, and then using their own screening efforts to address the limitations they identified.

Read the article here

CrystEngComm themed collections in 2023

Data Driven Crystal Engineering

This collection, guest edited by Professor Dongfeng Xue and Dr Haitao Zhao, aims to develop the ‘Fourth Paradigm’; revolutionizing crystalline materials R&D methods using advanced data-driven approaches to crystalline materials discovery.

Biomolecular Crystal Engineering

This collection, guest edited by Professor Claudia Pigliacelli and CrystEngComm Editorial Board Chair Professor Pierangelo Metrangolo, features work covering several aspects of crystallization processes involving biomolecules, from the production of single crystals up to their applications as materials in several high-end fields, ranging from catalysis to nanomedicine.

Crystal Engineering in Africa

This collection guest edited by Professor Susan Bourne, Professor Delia Haynes and Professor Patrice Kenfack Tsobnang celebrates the diversity and excellence of research in crystal engineering being carried out across Africa.

Two of our most popular articles published in 2023

A to Z of polymorphs related by proton transfer Amy Woods-Ryan, Cheryl L. Doherty and Aurora J. Cruz-Cabeza CrystEngComm, 2023,25, 2845-2858
Polymorph prediction through observed structural isomorphism leading to a new crystalline form of cannabidiol Hannah E. Straker, Lynn McMillan, Lina Mardiana, Glen R. Hebberd, Elle Watson, Paul G. Waddell, Michael R. Probert and Michael J. Hall CrystEngComm, 2023,25, 2479-2484

 CrystEngComm Editor’s Collections, 2023

 Curated by Advisory Board members, these collections highlight a number of previously published articles from the journal which the Guest Editor has personally chosen to showcase a specific area of research. The Editor’s Collections published in 2023 are:

Editor’s Collection: Engineering zeolitic imidazolate framework-8-based materials: This collection of recently published articles focusing on Engineering zeolitic imidazolate framework-8-based materials has been handpicked by CrystEngComm Advisory Board Member, Professor Paolo Falcaro, TU Graz, Austria.

Editor’s Collection: The application of quantum crystallography to solid-state pharmaceuticals: This collection of recently published articles handpicked by CrystEngComm Advisory Board Members, Professor Simon Coles, University of Southampton, UK and Dr Srinivasulu Aitipamula, Institute of Sustainability for Chemicals, Energy and Environment, Singapore, is dedicated to the rapidly-growing field of quantum crystallography and features original research articles from experts in the field, highlighting the latest advancements and future directions of Quantum Crystallography in understanding the structure and properties of pharmaceutical-like materials and organic solids.

Editor’s Collection: Advances in nanocrystal heterojunctions: This collection of recently published articles focusing on nanocrystal heterojunctions has been handpicked by CrystEngComm Advisory Board Member, Professor Georg Garnweitner, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany.

Editor’s Collection: Non-classical crystallization processes: This collection of recently published articles focusing on non-classical crystallization processes has been handpicked by CrystEngComm Advisory Board Member, Associate Professor Franca Jones, Curtin University, Australia.

From all the CrystEngComm team, we thank you for your continued interest in and support of the journal.