CrystEngComm Blog

When CrystEngComm was established in 1999 as one of the first online-only chemistry journals it published 9 articles in its first twelve months, releasing them online as soon as they were accepted. Since then it has grown to publish more than 1000 articles each year, going from a monthly journal (introduced in 2006) to twice a month (2011) to weekly (2015).  Next year we celebrate our 20^th issue, but ahead of that we’ve reached another milestone – this week sees the publication of our 10,000^th article! 

The article, published in Volume 19, Issue 42, entitled “The impact of hydrogen bonding on 100% photo-switching in solid-state nitro-nitrito linkage isomers” is online now and free to access. We spoke to the authors Dr Lauren E. Hatcher and Professor Paul Raithby from the University of Bath about the work behind the article:

“This paper describing the structural dynamics of light-activated, switchable nitro-nitrito linkage isomers forms part of a programme to develop new materials that will act as molecular switches when exposed to specific wavelengths of visible light.  The overall aim of the programme is to develop new materials that respond rapidly and reliably to changes in the local environment and to send out signals to let us know what is happening.  Our transition-metal nitro complexes, which can be reversibly switched to metastable nitrito isomers, are our benchmark materials in the development of new molecular switches. This is because they are ideal for crystallographic and spectroscopic studies, which provide the exquisite detail that is needed to design more efficient materials using crystal engineering methodologies.”

The Graphical Abstract of the article shows the hydrogen bonding present in the ground state structure of [Pd(Et4dien(NO2)]OTf (left) and the metastable endo-ONO state formed by irradiation at 150K (right).

The work has been highlighted on the front cover of the issue. The cover art shows a stylised view of the experimental set-up. Dr Hatcher shed some light on the experimental procedure:

	“The background to the front cover is based on a photograph of the LED ring array set-up used to illuminate the crystal in-situ on the diffractometer during the X-ray diffraction experiment. The LED ring array is specially designed to place 5 to 6 LEDs in a uniform arc around the crystal, at a distance of approximately 1 cm, which helps to ensure that the crystal is illuminated as evenly as possible. The array is installed on the neck of the low temperature device and can remain in place throughout the X-ray experiment without impeding the data collection. The LEDs can be easily changed, allowing us to use a variety of different excitation wavelengths, and can be operated either as a continuous light source or can be pulsed using a programmable function generator.”

When asked why they chose to publish with CrystEngComm, the authors had this to say:

Congratulations and a huge thanks to Dr Hatcher and Professor Raithby, and all our authors, for helping us reach this milestone!

	Author Profiles:
	Lauren Hatcher completed her PhD in Chemistry at the University of Bath in 2014, on the topic of Molecular Photocrystallography. She has since continued her interest in switchable molecular crystals as a postdoctoral researcher at Bath, studying crystalline switches that respond to different external stimuli including light, temperature, pressure and gas absorption. She received the Leadership Forum Award for Best Chemistry Student at the European SET Awards (2010), and was recently awarded the 2017 CCDC Chemical Crystallography Prize for Younger Scientists by the British Crystallographic Association. Lauren has a growing publication record, which includes an invited contribution to the 2016 CrystEngComm “New Talent” issue (CrystEngComm, 2016, 18(22), 4180-4187).
		Paul Raithby is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Bath, prior to which he was a faculty member of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge for 25 years. He has been awarded the RSC Corday Morgan Medal and Prize (1988) and the RSC Prize for Structural Chemistry (2008). He has over 800 publications and is among the 30 most cited British physical scientists. His research interests span aspects of chemical crystallography, dynamic structural science and co-ordination chemistry. Since 2012 he has led an EPSRC sponsored programme, at Bath, to develop new metastable materials with switchable functionality.

Earlier this year the 67th conference of the Japan Society of Coordination Chemistry (JSCC) was held at Hokkaido University, co-organised by The Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ). Including both fundamental and applied work on synthesis and properties of coordination compounds, encompassing organometallics and bioinorganic chemistry, the event was a huge success with over 1000 attendees. More than 150 talks, in English and in Japanese, were given over three days, including Award Lectures by world-renowned academics Omar M. Yaghi (University of California, Berkeley), Yoshiaki Nishibayashi (University of Toyko), Jian-Ren Shen (Okayama University), and Erwin Reisner (University of Cambridge).

A number of presentation slots were also allocated to students, and the RSC was on-hand to offer poster prizes.  This marks the eighth year running that Dalton Transactions and CrystEngComm have awarded prizes at this event, and this year also saw the presentation of the inaugural Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers awards. Out of a total of 460 poster presentations, the award winners were:

		The CrystEngComm award for outstanding poster presentation goes to Masashi Fujimura, in the group of Ryotaro Matsuda, for his poster entitled “溶存酸素吸着を実現する光応答性ナノポーラス金属錯体の設計“
		The Dalton Transactions award for outstanding poster presentation goes to Shuji Akinaga, in the group of Makoto Fujita at The University of Toyko, for his poster entitled “Inner-functionalization of crystalline meso-porous peptide complexes“
		An Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers award for outstanding poster presentation went to Shuto Mochizuki, in the group of Takashi Uemura at Kyoto University, for his poster entitled “Fabrication of ultrathin polymer films using metal-organic frameworks with 2-D nanospace“
		An Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers award for outstanding poster presentation went to Yoshiyuke Takemoto, of Nagoya Institute of Technology, for his poster entitled “Catalytic silylation of N2 by use of T-shaped cobalt complex bearing iminophosphorane ligands“

The winners were given an RSC heat-sensitive mug as seen in the photo above of Yoshiyuke Takemoto – who we hope doesn’t drink coffee while using that solvent drying system!

The RSC offers its hearty congratulations to all the winners!

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.