‘To get a polar crystal is still a challenging task,’ say Roberto Centore and colleagues. However in their CrystEngComm Hot article they in fact tell us about the discovery of a new class of non-chiral compounds forming polar crystal structures.
Their compounds are made by condensation of 4-hydroxybenzohydrazide with a variety of non-chiral aliphatic ketones, both cyclic and acyclic, such as methyl-ethylketone, acetone, cyclohexanone and cyclobutanone and all of them exhibit second harmonic generation (SHG) activity. In one case, they found that solid state polymorphism characterized by single-crystal-to-single-crystal transitions between polar phases was taking place.
Read their paper now – free to access until the 4th February:
A series of compounds forming polar crystals and showing single-crystal-to-single-crystal transitions between polar phases
Roberto Centore, Mojca Jazbinsek, Angela Tuzi, Antonio Roviello, Amedeo Capobianco and Andrea Peluso
CrystEngComm, 2012, DOI: 10.1039/C2CE06352B
