CrystEngComm Blog

Although pyrite has been made in many morphological forms, such as films, nanocubes and nanowires, microspheres have never been made …until now. Qi-Zhi Yao, Gen-Tao Zhou and their team based in Heifei, China have used a microwave-assisted polyol method to produce uniform and monodisperse pyrite microspherolites.

Monodisperse nano-/microspheres have attracted increasing attention because of their promising applications in optical and photonic crystals and microlenses and can be used as seed particles for the core-shell and hollow spheres. Read more in this recent CrystEngComm Hot Article.

Microwave-assisted controlled synthesis of monodisperse pyrite microspherolites
Mao-Lin Li, Qi-Zhi Yao, Gen-Tao Zhou, Xiao-Fei Qu, Cheng-Fa Mu and Sheng-Quan Fu
CrystEngComm, 2011, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C1CE05478C

Guoqi Zhang, Guoqiang Yang and coworkers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing make a series of bis(pyrrolyl)carbohydrazide derivatives in this CrystEngComm Hot article.

The compounds aggregate to form double helices in the solution state, an interesting discovery, as artificial double helices are very rare.

Read the full article for FREE until 30th August to find out more…

Self-complementary hydrogen-bonded duplexes and helices based on bis(pyrrolyl)carbohydrazide derivatives
Dehui Hu, Zhipei Yang, Guoqi Zhang, Min Liu, Junfeng Xiang, Tongling Liang, Jinshi Ma and Guoqiang Yang
CrystEngComm, 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1CE05542A

José Giner Planas and colleagues from the Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), and Mark E. Light and Michael B. Hursthouse from the University of Southampton look at methyl-o-carboranyl and o-carboranyl alcohols bearing N-aromatic rings in this CrystEngComm Hot article.

Giner-Planas relates the presence of infinite O–H···N hydrogen bonding networks with melting points using decomposed Fingerprint plots, which looks to be a really interesting finding for crystal engineers.

Read the full article for FREE until 30th August…

Supramolecular architectures in o-carboranyl alcohols bearing N-aromatic rings: syntheses, crystal structures and melting points correlation
Florencia Di Salvo, Beatriz Camargo, Yolanda García, Francesc Teixidor, Clara Viñas, José Giner Planas, Mark E. Light and Michael B. Hursthouse
CrystEngComm, 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1CE05449J

In this CrystEngComm Hot article, Roberto Otero and colleagues from Spain self assemble zinc meso-tetramesitylporphyrin on copper and gold into one-dimensional nanorods.

Otero explains they are ‘shish-kebab type coordination polymers’, and that they can extend for hundreds of nanometres.

Read the full article for FREE to find out more about these porphyrin nanorods…

Surface assembly of porphyrin nanorods with one-dimensional zinc–oxygen spinal cords
Marta Trelka, Christian Urban, Celia Rogero, Paula de Mendoza, Eva Mateo-Marti, Yang Wang, Iñaki Silanes, David Écija, Manuel Alcamí, Felix Yndurain, Andrés Arnau, Fernando Martín, Antonio M. Echavarren, José Ángel Martín-Gago, José María Gallego, Roberto Otero and Rodolfo Miranda
CrystEngComm, 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1CE05494E

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Read this CrystEngComm Hot article to discover how the Kirkendall effect can be used to make BiOI nests.

Zhi Zheng and co-workers from Central China Normal University made δ-Bi2O3 spheres, which became the reactive template to make the hierarchical ternary BiOI nest-shaped structures.

Read the full article for FREE to find out more…

Low temperature synthesis of δ-Bi2O3 solid spheres and their conversion to hierarchical BiOI nests via the Kirkendall effect
Manying Liu, Lizhi Zhang, Kewei Wang and Zhi Zheng
CrystEngComm, 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1CE05101F

A unique feature, which distinguishes some MOFs from conventional porous materials, is the ability to ‘breathe’ i.e. to expand or contract in response to external stimuli such as variation in temperature. Such flexible networks are also called ‘breathing’ MOFs. In their recent Hot Article Roland Fischer and his colleagues have  investigated the structural transformations of such breathing frameworks yielding valuable insights in the underlying mechanisms.

Read for free until the 20th August 2011

Multiple phase-transitions upon selective CO2 adsorption in an alkyl ether functionalized metal–organic framework—an in situ X-ray diffraction study
Sebastian Henke, D. C. Florian Wieland, Mikhail Meilikhov, Michael Paulus, Christian Sternemann, Kirill Yusenko and Roland A. Fischer
CrystEngComm, 2011, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C1CE05446E

In this HOT article, Babashkina and co-workers have synthesized the first examples of Ni^II complexes containing the same asymmetric NTT [(N-(thio)phosphorylated thioamides and thioureas RC(S)NHP(X)(OR0)2 (X ¼ O, S)] ligand featuring an aryl-NH substituent at the thiocarbonyl group and coordinating to the metal both in the 1,3-N,S- and 1,5-S,S’-fashion in the solid state depending on the crystallization conditions.

Find out more about these interesting complexes by reading the full HOT article for FREE at:

Solvent-induced 1,3-N,S– vs. 1,5-S,S‘-coordination in the Ni^II complex [Ni{p-Me₂NC₆H₄NHC(S)NP(S)(OiPr)₂}₂]
Maria G. Babashkina, Damir A. Safin, Monika Srebro, Piotr Kubisiak, Mariusz P. Mitoraj, Michael Bolte and Yann Garcia
CrystEngComm, 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C1CE05387F

Song Gao and colleagues from Peking University investigate a way of improving the chances of obtaining chiral crystalline solids, in this CrystEngComm Hot article.

Control of chirality is important in the making of drugs, and in materials that are used for things like second-order nonlinear optics and ferroelectrics. Here Gao uses more acentric centers in the crystal lattice, to try and obtain chiral solids from achiral starting materials.

Read the full article for FREE to find out more about making chiral crystals…

Chiral crystalline solids of ammonium-templated ErIII–formate frameworks assembled from three achiral acentric components
Bin Liu, Hai-Bin Zheng, Zhe-Ming Wang and Song Gao
CrystEngComm, 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1CE05250K

In their recent CrystEngComm article Pierangelo Metrangolo, Giuseppe Resnati and co-workers discuss how fluorine can display a region of positive electrostatic potential when bound to residues which work as particularly strong electron withdrawing groups. Fluorine can thus function as a halogen bond donor and form complexes with lone-pair-containing neutral atoms and anions. Read more about the impact of this newly revealed aspect of fluorine behaviour in the communication below.

The fluorine atom as a halogen bond donor, viz. a positive site
Pierangelo Metrangolo, Jane S. Murray, Tullio Pilati, Peter Politzer, Giuseppe Resnati and Giancarlo Terraneo
CrystEngComm, 2011, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C1CE05554B