CrystEngComm Blog

In this new CrystEngComm Hot Article, a team of Italian scientists led by M. Lucia Curri have demonstrated that monomodal or bimodal PbS nanocrystals can be produced in a single experiment.  The group were able to shed light on the mechanism of self organization in these assemblies with an aim to predict the the formation of the solid crystal phases.

It was found that the effect of several parameters, including solvent composition, nanocrystal concentration, size ratio of the two populations, strongly influenced the formation of the superlattice and the final geometry.

The ability in engineering nanocrystal building blocks is essential for designing novel architectured materials.

Find out more about this work here. FREE to read until 10th March 2011!

Self-organization of mono- and bi-modal PbS nanocrystal populations in superlattices
Michela Corricelli, Davide Altamura, Liberato De Caro, Antonella Guagliardi, Andrea Falqui, Alessandro Genovese, Angela Agostiano, Cinzia Giannini, Marinella Striccoli and M. Lucia Curri
CrystEngComm, 2011, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C0CE00874E

Robert W. Lancaster and colleagues from University College London, have investigated the phenomenon of ‘disappearing polymorphs’, using a 50 year old progesterone sample obtained from the University of Innsbruck archive.

Disappearing polymorphs are an unusual occurance, where a form that was previously considered to be stable and easy to make, suddenly becomes very difficult to obtain. The reasons for this are poorly understood, and here Lancaster looks into the case of the hormone progesterone, where the modern version suffers from a ‘disappearing polymorph’, which can be found in the 50 year old archived sample.

Read the full article for FREE to find out more.

Fifty-year old samples of progesterone demonstrate the complex role of synthetic impurities in stabilizing a metastable polymorph
Robert W. Lancaster, Lisa D. Harris and David Pearson
CrystEngComm, 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0CE00858C, Communication

In this CrystEngComm Hot article, Sunil Verma and co-workers have produced a large single crystal of lithium pnitrophenolate trihydrate, which can be used as a non-linear optical material.

Non-linear optical materials can be used in lasers, and organic NLO materials are particularly desirable because they have higher non-linearity and better laser damage resistance when compared to inorganic materials.

This article is significant because the authors have managed to grow a large size crystal, which is normally difficult due to the weakness of the van der Waals and hydrogen bonds holding the molecules together.

Read the full article to find out more about the slow cooling solution growth method used…

Solubility, crystal growth, morphology, crystalline perfection and optical homogeneity of lithium p-nitrophenolate trihydrate, a semiorganic NLO crystal
S. Dinakaran, Sunil Verma and S. Jerome Das
CrystEngComm, 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0CE00663G, Paper

READ FOR FREE until 3rd March 2011