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.

We are delighted to announce the winner of the CrystEngComm Outstanding Paper Award, 2022

The Outstanding Paper Award 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.

Congratulations to 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: 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.

Meet the authors of this Outstanding Paper

Matthew R. Wilkinson

Matthew is currently in the closing stages of completing of his PhD, with his thesis titled “Deep Learning for Solid Form Engineering”. Matthew’s PhD was undertaken as part of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Bath in partnership with the Institute for Sustainability and CMAC future manufacturing hub. Prior to his PhD studies, Matthew graduated from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Bath with an MChem Chemistry for Drug Discovery with Industrial Training. Matthew has undertaken further industrial placements with the Alan Turing Institute and Ignota Labs during his PhD which have furthered his research and career interests, which now align with applying Artificial Intelligence to solve real-world challenges in industrial and research settings.

Uriel Martinez-Hernandez

Uriel received his MSc in Computer Science from the Centre for Research and Advanced Studies, Mexico in 2008, and his PhD in Robotics and Machine Learning from the University of Sheffield in 2015. He was a Research Associate and Research Fellow at Sheffield Robotics, University of Sheffield and the Institute for Design, Robotics and Optimisation (iDRO), University of Leeds, respectively. He is currently a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Robotics and Autonomous Systems at the University of Bath, Director of MSc in Robotics and Autonomous Systems, core member of the Centre for Autonomous Robotics (CENTAUR) and CDT in Accountable, Responsible and Transparent Artificial Intelligence. His research interests include machine learning, multimodal sensing and active perception, wearable assistive robotics, autonomous robots and human–robot interaction.

Laura Huggon

Laura has recently graduated from the University of Bath with an MSc in Molecular Biosciences during which time she worked as a research assistant in the Smart Process Engineering Lab. Laura is now in the first year of her PhD at King’s College London, where her research explores synaptic dysfunction in TDP-43 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia, as part of the UK Dementia Research Institute. Laura also holds a BSc Biochemistry with Industrial Training from the University of Bath. Laura’s career goals and research interests centre around furthering understanding of the mechanisms behind neurodegenerative conditions.

Chick Wilson

Chick Wilson is Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the University of Bath; prior to his retirement in 2021, he was Associate Dean for Research and Chair of Physical Chemistry.  His almost 40 years research career in structural chemistry and crystallisation science was split roughly 50:50 in time between posts in national labs (Rutherford Appleton) and in academia (Universities of Glasgow, Bath).  He was involved in many larger projects including at neutron and synchrotron radiation central facilities, as a founder member of the CMAC academic-industry Continuous Manufacturing and Advanced Crystallisation consortium, and the Bath M⁴ metastable materials programme.  He held many advisory roles in the UK and overseas including with EPSRC, STFC and ILL, Grenoble

Bernardo Castro-Dominguez

Bernardo Castro-Dominguez is an Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering at the University of Bath, where he also holds the prestigious position of Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Manufacturing and Design (dMaDe). He received his PhD from the University of Tokyo in 2013. His research focuses on the implementation of high throughput experimental technologies, machine learning and AI for materials discovery and process optimization. Bernardo is interested in developing materials and processes that enable sustainability and circularity. Bernardo’s research has been funded by the FDA, UKRI, British Council, Royal Society of Chemistry and other organizations.

Read the full outstanding article:

Predicting pharmaceutical crystal morphology using artificial intelligence Matthew R. Wilkinson, Uriel Martinez-Hernandez, Laura K. Huggon, Chick C. Wilson and Bernardo Castro Dominguez CrystEngComm, 2022, 24, 7545-7553

Please join us in congratulating this year’s winners!

We are delighted to share with you our latest themed collection:  A celebration of 25 volumes of CrystEngComm.

The publication of the 25^th volume of CrystEngComm in 2023 is 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 with increasing submissions, from being a journal with no issues, to monthly, then bimonthly and finally weekly publication, publishing almost 15000 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 we have put together this collection of articles and highlights, representing some of the most highly-cited work across the areas of research published in CrystEngComm over the years.

         Read the full collection here

Browse some of the articles in the collection below:

Formation of amorphous calcium carbonate and its transformation into mesostructured calcite Carlos Rodriguez-Navarro, Krzysztof Kudłacz, Özlem Cizer and Encarnacion Ruiz-Agudo CrystEngComm, 2015,17, 58-72
B3LYP augmented with an empirical dispersion term (B3LYP-D*) as applied to molecular crystals Bartolomeo Civalleri, Claudio M. Zicovich-Wilson, Loredana Valenzano and Piero Ugliengo CrystEngComm, 2008,10, 405-410
Tuning the crystal morphology and size of zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 in aqueous solution by surfactants Yichang Pan, Dodi Heryadi, Feng Zhou, Lan Zhao, Gabriella Lestari, Haibin Su and Zhiping Lai CrystEngComm, 2011,13, 6937-6940
Bulk crystal growth of hybrid perovskite material CH3NH3PbI3 Yangyang Dang, Yang Liu, Youxuan Sun, Dongsheng Yuan, Xiaolong Liu, Weiqun Lu, Guangfeng Liu, Haibing Xia and Xutang Tao CrystEngComm, 2015,17, 665-670
Acid–base crystalline complexes and the pKa rule Aurora J. Cruz-Cabeza CrystEngComm, 2012,14, 6362-6365
Fingerprinting intermolecular interactions in molecular crystals Mark A. Spackman and Joshua J. McKinnon CrystEngComm, 2002,4, 378-392
Formation of high crystalline ZIF-8 in an aqueous solution Koji Kida, Muneyuki Okita, Kosuke Fujita, Shunsuke Tanaka and Yoshikazu Miyake CrystEngComm, 2013,15, 1794-1801
Static and lattice vibrational energy differences between polymorphs Jonas Nyman and Graeme M. Day CrystEngComm, 2015,17, 5154-5165
Recent advances in crystal engineering Christer B. Aakeröy, Neil R. Champness and Christoph Janiak CrystEngComm, 2010,12, 22-43

The Editorial team hope you enjoy reading these articles, and thank you for helping shape CrystEngComm into the successful resource for the community that it continues to be today!

We are delighted to share with you our latest Editor’s Collection on The application of quantum crystallography to solid-state pharmaceuticals.

This latest collection of recently published articles has been 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.

This Editor’s collection 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. The collection also highlights studies using Quantum Mechanical approaches with tools that are set to be used for Quantum Crystallography (e.g., QTAIM and NCI), giving a glimpse into the types of results that we can expect to see more of as the field matures and is more widely applied.  

Read the full collection here

Browse some of the articles in the collection below:

Energy partitioning of pharmaceutical co-crystal structures Birger Dittrich, Lauren E. Connor, Dominic Werthmueller, Nicole Sykes and Anikó Udvarhelyi CrystEngComm, 2023,25, 1101-1115
Crystal engineering, electron density analysis, and in situ variable temperature studies on co-crystal between nicotinic acid and gallic acid sesquihydrate Infal Iqbal, Arshad Mehmood, Sajida Noureen, Claude Lecomte and Maqsood Ahmed CrystEngComm, 2023,25, 770-784
Enhanced luminescence of single-benzene fluorescent molecules through halogen bond cocrystals Fei Yu, Xiunan Zhang, Hongtu Zhao, Zhicheng Jiang, Ting Wang, Na Wang, Xin Huang, Lina Zhou and Hongxun Hao CrystEngComm, 2022,24, 3537-3545

Meet the Editors

Simon Coles (http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8414-9272) obtained his BSc and PhD in structural systematics and molecular modelling at the University of Wales, Cardiff before a PDRA appointment with the Royal Institution to build the world’s first dedicated small molecule single crystal beamline, 9.8, at the Daresbury synchrotron. In 1998 Simon moved to Southampton to establish a new laboratory and manage the National Crystallography Service. Simon became Director of the National Crystallography Service (www.ncs.ac.uk) in 2009, Director of the UK Physical Sciences Data-science Service (www.psds.ac.uk) in 2019 and recently a lead for the Physical Science Data Infrastructure (www.psdi.ac.uk). Simon is an author on over 900 papers supporting chemical synthesis, in many areas of structural chemistry and in digital/chemical information. He is one of the world’s most prolific chemical crystallographers.

Srinivasulu Aitipamula (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7640-9513) is a Scientist at the Institute of Sustainability for Chemicals, Energy and Environment (ISCE2) of A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research), Singapore. He obtained his PhD from the University of Hyderabad, India for his studies on structural and thermochemical studies of host–guest systems and polymorphs. After a short industrial stint as a Manager-R&D at Shasun Research Centre, India, he joined the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences (now ISCE2) and established the co-crystallization capability. He is an author of 60 peer-reviewed research articles including three book chapters. His research interests include crystal engineering, solid-form screening of active pharmaceutical ingredients, encapsulation, and formulation development.

We hope you enjoy these articles and the rest in the Collection.

About CrystEngComm

Published by the Royal Society of Chemistry and with a truly international Editorial Board, CrystEngComm is the forum for the design and understanding of crystalline materials. We welcome studies on the investigation of molecular behaviour within crystals, control of nucleation and crystal growth, engineering of crystal structures, and construction of crystalline materials with tuneable properties and functions.

We invite you to submit your research to CrystEngComm to give your work the global visibility it deserves.

 Submit your research now

We are delighted to share with you our latest Editor’s Collection on Engineering zeolitic imidazolate framework-8-based materials

This latest 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.

Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework-8 (ZIF-8) is an archetypical Metal-Organic Framework that is often used to develop crystal engineering methods and explore new properties in porous materials. By developing new preparation protocols to control the ZIF structure (from amorphous to crystalline with specific phases), by imparting exogenous hierarchical porosity using templating agents, and by defining synthetic methods for the preparation of core-shell particles, ZIF-8 research will be able to further expand knowledge in porous materials and progress their practical applications. In a different research direction, the potential of ZIF-8 is currently under investigation by developing host–guest systems and composites; these include the integration of ZIFs with biomolecules, polymers, ceramics, and other porous materials. This selection of articles would point to the most recent development in engineering ZIF-8-based materials.

Read the full collection here

Browse some of the articles in the collection below:

Recovery of syringic acid from aqueous solution by magnetic Fe–Zn/ZIF and its slow release from the CA-coated carrier based on the 3Rs concept Huifang Zhao, Ting Wang, Dahuan Liu and Qingyuan Yang CrystEngComm, 2022, 24, 8427-8433
App-based quantification of crystal phases and amorphous content in ZIF biocomposites Michael R. Hafner, Laura Villanova and Francesco Carraro CrystEngComm, 2022, 24, 7266-7271
MOF/COF hybrids as next generation materials for energy and biomedical applications Cigdem Altintas, Ilknur Erucar and Seda Keskin CrystEngComm, 2022, 24, 7360-7371

Meet the Editor

Paolo Falcaro is Professor of Bio-based Materials Technology at Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria. He received his PhD in Materials Engineering at the University of Bologna, Italy. Since then he has been working in the field of self-assembled materials, film deposition, and crystal engineering. During the first part of his career he used the sol-gel method to develop nanostructured materials for industry (Civen/Nanofab Italy). In 2009, he moved to an Australian national research organization (CSIRO) where he led a research team engineering porous materials and related inorganic- and bio-composites. In 2016 he joined Graz University of Technology (Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry). Paolo is a recipient of several awards and grants including the “POPCRYSTAL” European Research Council consolidator grant. His research focuses on metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) for the fabrication of films, the development of positioning protocols (e.g. MOF patterns) and the synthesis of bio-composites.

We hope you enjoy these articles and the rest in the collection.

Regular readers of CrystEngComm will know that in November 2020 we published a themed issue entitled The Cambridge Structural Database – A wealth of knowledge gained from a million structures. Guest edited by Suzanna Ward and Ghazala Sadiq, the issue celebrated the one millionth crystal structure, and featured 33 articles highlighting some of the many applications of the data in the CSD. 

Now, the community can find out more about the work behind some of these papers with a series of live webinars, jointly organised by the CCDC and CrystEngComm. Running throughout January 2021, these webinars will feature authors talking about the context, challenges and wider scope of their work.

Find out more and register here. 

Well what a year this has been! CrystEngComm has published over 850 articles, from 57 countries with two themed issues and an increase on review content from 2019!

As we all know with 2020 came the emergence of Covid-19 all around the world. The virus has no doubt had an impact on all of our individual lives as well as to our research community in some form or other, and all of us here very much hope that you all continue to stay safe and well. If as a member of our community you do need support through Covid-19 there is further information available here.

We have all moved forward and adapted our lives and ways of working as best we can to enable us to positively continue what we do. Chair of the CrystEngComm Editorial Board Professor Pierangelo Metrangolo has this to say about how Covid-19 initially affected him and his research team and what he thinks the community has and can take from this experience:

2020 also saw two new Associate Editors join the CrystEngComm Editorial Board, Professors Christian Doonan and Kwangyeol Lee. We were delighted to be able to welcome them to the team and are looking forward to working with them to continue to shape the future of the journal for the community. We also said goodbye to Professor Georg Garnweitner as an Associate Editor, and we thank him for his many years working so hard to help make the journal what it is today.

			Kwangyeol Lee is Professor of Chemistry at Korea University.  He graduated from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in 1992 and obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1997 from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign under the supervision of Professor John. R. Shapley. Throughout his independent research career Professor Lee has studied nanocrystal growth, phase conversions in nanoscale as well as nanoparticle applications. His current research efforts are focused on the development of synthetic methodologies for nanoscale materials and the development of nanotechnologies to support the environment by creating sustainable energy. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Lectureship Award (2007, The Chemical Society of Japan), Wiley-KCS Young Scholar Award (2009, The Korean Chemical Society) and the Excellent Research Award (2019, Inorganic Chemistry Division of The Korean Chemical Society).
			Christian Doonan is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Adelaide. He received his PhD at the University of Melbourne and carried out post-doctoral work with Professor Omar Yaghi at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research group focuses on the design and synthesis of Metal-organic Framework materials for application to biotechnology and catalysis. Christian is a member of the international MOF commission and his research has been recognised through several awards including, an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, a distinguished lectureship award from the Chemical Society of Japan and a Double Hundred Talent Professorship at Qingdao University.

CrystEngComm commissioned themed issues in 2020

Two commissioned themed issues of the journal were published in 2020:

Crystal engineering for electrochemical applications – this issue focuses on crystal engineering strategies for the design of materials with superior properties for electrochemical applications, ranging from lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors to electrocatalysts. It was guest edited by Professor Georg Garnweitner,TU Braunschweig and Professor Dongfeng Xue, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The Cambridge Structural Database – A wealth of knowledge gained from a million structures – This issue combines 33 articles which highlight some of the many applications of the CSD in celebration of the one millionth crystal structure, a significant community achievement in 2019. Throughout this issue, the research carried out by the authors demonstrates the breadth of information and the variety of applications arising from the data in the CSD. Over the last half a century the complexity and size of structures have expanded, and the techniques and instrumentation used to determine new structures have evolved considerably. The articles show how far the field has evolved. It was guest edited by Suzanna C. Ward and Ghazala Sadiq, CCDC.

CrystEngComm Live Webinars in 2021

Join CCDC and CrystEngComm for 1 hour every Friday in January, where we’ll be going Behind the paper with an author who used insights from the 1 million structures in the CSD in a unique way.

Learn more and register here.

In these sessions you will get to know the author, hear their views on the wider context and challenges of their work – and have the chance to ask questions.

CrystEngComm Editor’s Collections, 2020

In late 2019 we started publishing Editor’s collections in CrystEngComm, and have continued this throughout 2020. Curated by Editorial 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 2020 are:

Editor’s Collection: Mechanochemistry, Guest editor Elena Boldyreva, Novosibirsk State University, Russia

Editor’s Collection: Computer aided solid form design, Guest Editor Susan Reutzel-Edens, Eli Lilly and Company, USA

Editor’s Collection: Zirconium based MOFs for catalysis, Guest Editor Professor Omar Farha, Northwestern University, USA

Editor’s collection: Metal Organic Frameworks as catalysts for water splitting and CO₂ reduction, Guest Editor Tong-Bu Lu, Tianjin University of Technology, China

Accessing 2020 Content of Interest 

We have made it easier for readers to access recently published content of interest to them this year by curating subject collections, Highlight article collections and HOT article collections:

2020 Highlight Collection

HOT articles

Crystal Growth

Nanomaterials

Coordination networks

Crystal engineering techniques

Supramolecular & Polymorphism

Database Analysis

Publishing Open Access in CrystEngComm – Read & Publish

Open access (OA) is shaping the future of scholarly publishing, and we are doing all we can to build an open future that works for everyone. This includes developing services that will help you – whether you’re the one publishing, the one reading, or the one managing the entire process – to make important research more easily available.

Read & Publish is an alternative to the traditional subscription model. It helps both authors and institutions gradually tip the balance of their publishing output towards open access, making the process easier and more financially viable. With a Read & Publish agreement in place at their institution, authors can publish gold OA in all hybrid Royal Society of Chemistry journals, and readers have access to every paper in our journal portfolio.

More information on Read & Publish is available here.

We would love you to be part of the exciting future of CrystEngComm so on behalf of the Chair of the Editorial Board, Professor Pierangelo Metrangolo, Politecnico di Milano, Italy, we invite you to submit your research to CrystEngComm.

From all the CrystEngComm team, we thank you for your continued interest in and support of the journal and wish you a Happy New Year!