CrystEngComm Blog

The 2017 meeting of the American Crystallographic Association was held in New Orleans from May 26th – 30th. The meeting boasted a packed program featuring lectures, workshops, and poster sessions by range of international presenters from both academia and industry. The CrystEngComm poster prize was awarded to Raúl Castañeda, for his poster Co-Crystals of Dithieno[3,2-a:2′,3′-c]phenazine Derivatives and Trimeric Perfluoro-ortho-Phenylene Mercury.

Raúl was presenting work that he carried out while working towards a Master’s degree with Tatiana Timofeeva at New Mexico Highlands University. Raul’s work focused on studying halogen bonding in compounds for application as inorganic electronics:

Dithienophenazine derivatives are molecules recently synthesized from different groups in attempt to apply them to inorganic electronics. Our group recently synthesized five different derivatives with dithieno[3,2-a:2′,3′-c]phenazine (DTPhz) with equal substituents at 9 and 10 position (H, F, Cl, Br) or pyrido[2,3-b]dithieno[3,2-f:2′,3′-h]quinoxaline (8N-DTPhz). These molecules are very similar in their electronic properties because they have similar band gaps and HOMO levels, but different dipole moments between the halogen derivatives and the non-halogen derivatives. Being very similar as donors make them very good examples to study halogen bonding in donor-acceptor co-crystals with a fully perfluorinated acceptor such as trimeric perfluoro-ortho-phenylene mercury (TPPM). Halogen bonding was important in these co-crystals, since only the donors with halogen substituents lead to co-crystals with mixed donor-acceptor stacks. Unsubstituted DTPhz do not gave co-crystals, and 8N-DTPhz gave a co-crystal where water is blocking one side of the acceptor. The four structures obtained underline the importance of halogen bonding in donor-acceptor co-crystals, as well the impact of different halogens in crystal packing.

Raúl is originally from Chihuahua, Mexico, where he carried out his Bachelor’s degree before moving to the US to study for his Master’s. He then continued moving north to Canada where he is currently pursuing his PhD with Jaclyn Brusso at the University of Ottawa. Besides crystallography, he enjoys playing clarinet for a community band in Gatineau Quebec.

The 2016 Journal Citation Reports® have just been released and we are pleased to  announce that CrystEngComm received an Impact Factor of  3.474.

We would like to thank all our authors, referees and readers who have contributed to this success, as well our Editorial and Advisory Boards for their hard work and continued support. Because of you, CrystEngComm has maintained its position as the largest publisher of high quality fundamental research across the field of crystal engineering.

We invite you to submit your best work to CrystEngComm!

Here are the top five articles that contributed to the 2016 Impact Factor. All of these articles will be free to access for 4 weeks.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Chemistry Conference, and the 150th birthday of Canada itself, we’ve released a special cross-journal web collection that highlights the excellence and breadth of Canadian research.

It’s free to access until June 18th and features papers in CrystEngComm and twenty other RSC journals. It contains contributions from our Editorial and Advisory Boards, including the Chair of the CrystEngComm editorial board, Leonard R. MacGillivray.

Here are some of the most cited research papers published CrystEngComm in 2016. With authors from China, India, the UK, Malaysia, Canada and Portugal they highlight what’s hot in the world of Crystal Engineering.