CrystEngComm Blog

We are delighted to share with you our latest themed issue New Talent 2022.

This issue celebrates the significant contributions from early career researchers to the field of crystal engineering.

This collection is guest edited by:

Professor Christian Doonan, University of Adelaide, Australia
Professor Kwangyeol Lee, Korea University, Korea

Browse a selection of the articles featured in the issue below:

Fast and reversible bidirectional photomechanical response displayed by a flexible polycrystalline aggregate of a hydrazone Poonam Gupta, Suryanarayana Allu, Pragyan J. Hazarika, Nisha R. Ray, Ashwini K. Nangia and Naba K. Nath *CrystEngComm*, 2022, 24, 7261-7265
Magnetic order in a metal thiocyanate perovskite-analogue Matthew J. Cliffe, Oscar Fabelo and Laura Cañadillas-Delgado *CrystEngComm*, 2022, 24, 7250-7254
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
Three-dimensional Cd(II) porphyrin metal–organic frameworks for the colorimetric sensing of Electron donors Hui Min Tay, Emily J. Goddard and Carol Hua *CrystEngComm*, 2022,24, 7277-7282
Hydrogen and halogen bond synergy in the self-assembly of 3,5-dihalo-tyrosines: structural and theoretical insights Lorenzo Sori, Andrea Pizzi, Nicola Demitri, Giancarlo Terraneo, Antonio Frontera and Pierangelo Metrangolo *CrystEngComm*, 2022,24, 7255-7260

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

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HOT Articles – Online and free to access now

03 Oct 2022

We have updated our reviewer recommended ‘HOT articles’ for 2022.

We update our HOT articles collection quarterly and have made the selected articles free to access until 18 November 2022! This collection represents the top 10% of research published in CrystEngComm between July – September 2022.

Make the most of the free to access period by browsing the collection today!

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Computer Aided Solid Form Design

17 Jan 2022

Following the Editor’s collection on Computer Aided Solid Form Design published in 2020, we are delighted to share with you a further, recently commissioned collection of articles also focusing on Computer Aided Solid Form Design, again guest edited by Editorial Board Member Susan Reutzel-Edens, The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre, UK.

These articles are free to access until February 28^th 2022 and we hope you enjoy reading them.

Selected articles:

Crystal structure prediction of energetic materials and a twisted arene with Genarris and GAtor
Imanuel Bier, Dana O’Connor, Yun-Ting Hsieh, Wen Wen, Anna M. Hiszpanski, T. Yong-Jin Han and Noa Marom
CrystEngComm, 2021, 23, 6023-6038. DOI: 10.1039/ D1CE00745A

First global analysis of the GSK database of small molecule crystal structures
Leen N. Kalash, Jason C. Cole, Royston C. B. Copley, Colin M. Edge, Alexandru A. Moldovan, Ghazala Sadiq and Cheryl L. Doherty
CrystEngComm, 2021, 23, 5430-5442. DOI: 10.1039/ D1CE00665G

The trimorphism of 3-hydroxybenzoic acid: an experimental and computational study
Doris E. Braun
CrystEngComm, 2021, 23, 2513-2519. DOI: 10.1039/ D1CE00159K

Meet the Editor

Susan Reutzel-Edens was a senior research advisor in Small Molecule Design & Development at Eli Lilly and Company and adjunct professor at Purdue University. She earned her PhD at the University of Minnesota (1991) under the direction of the late Professor Margaret C. Etter. After, she joined Eli Lilly where she founded the solid form design programme. In 2021, she joined the CCDC as Head of Science.
For two decades she led a team of cross-functional scientists charged with finding commercially-viable crystalline forms for small-molecule drug products. She has contributed to the development of more than 150 compounds, is a named inventor on 12 US patents, and has published over 50 papers and book chapters on key aspects of solid form development.
Susan’s research interests include crystal polymorphism, materials design and engineering, crystal nucleation and growth, structure-property relationships, crystal structure prediction and digital design of drug products. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2018 and currently serves on the CrystEngComm Editorial Board. She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Crystal Growth & Design and Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

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 and give your work the global visibility it deserves.

To keep up to date with the latest articles and other journal news, sign up to the e-alerts.

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HOT Articles – Online and free to access now

05 Jan 2022

We have updated our reviewer recommended ‘HOT articles’ for 2021.

We update our HOT articles collection quarterly and have made the selected articles free to access until 18 February 2022! This collection represents the top 10% of research published in CrystEngComm between October – December 2021.

Make the most of the free to access period by browsing the collection today!

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Editor’s Collection: Rare Earth Materials

29 Nov 2021

We are delighted to share with you our latest collection of recently published articles focusing on Rare Earth Materials handpicked by Associate Editor, Dongfeng Xue, Multiscale Crystal Materials Research Center, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, CAS, China

Rare earth materials play a key role in many practical applications such as catalysts, lasers, luminescence, magnetism, and sensors, which are of great interest to the community. Crystallisation involves two continuous stages (including nucleation and crystal growth) when preparing rare earth materials, therefore, crystal engineering strategies may stimulate much more innovative ideas when using rare earth elements as powerful functional sources or modifiers in the scale of the whole system. Rare earth elements have f-orbitals and f-electrons that possess specific coordination abilities with a wide range of coordination numbers from 2 to 16, which provide many opportunities to create novel structures and functions.

These articles are all free to access until January 31st, 2022 and we hope you enjoy reading them.

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

Trends in rare earth thiophosphate syntheses: Rb₃Ln(PS₄)₂ (Ln = La, Ce, Pr), Rb_3−xNa_xLn(PS₄)₂ (Ln = Ce, Pr; x = 0.50, 0.55), and RbEuPS₄ obtained by molten flux crystal growth

Selected articles:

Logan S. Breton, Mark D. Smith and Hans-Conrad zur Loye

CrystEngComm, 2021, 23, 5241-5248

From [B₆O₁₃]⁸⁻ to [GaB₅O₁₃]⁸⁻ to [Ga{B₅O₉(OH)}{BO(OH)₂}]²⁻: synthesis, structure and nonlinear optical properties of new metal borates

Qi-Ming Qiu and Guo-Yu Yang

CrystEngComm, 2021, 23, 5200-5207

Bridgman growth and characterization of a HoCa₄O(BO₃)₃ crystal

Xinchao He, Zhigang Sun, Xiaoniu Tu, Sheng Wang, Kainan Xiong, Hongbing Chen, Xiaoyan Zhang, Liming Shen and Yanqing Zheng

CrystEngComm, 2021, 23, 4833-4839

Meet the Editor

Dongfeng Xue is a Professor at the Multiscale Crystal Materials Research Center, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. He received his PhD in inorganic chemistry at Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, CAS, in 1998. Following postdoctoral studies at the Universität Osnabrück, University of Ottawa and the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, he was promoted to full professor in 2001 at Dalian University of Technology, China. In 2011, he returned to Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry to assume his professorship in materials chemistry, as the director of State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization during 2015-2019. In 2020, he moved to Shandong University as the director of State Key Laboratory of Crystal Materials. In 2021, he created Multiscale Crystal Materials Research Center at Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology. His research interests focus on multiscale crystallization of inorganic matter for energy and optical applications. He has published more than 500 papers and book chapters, and holds around 20 patents. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Corresponding Member of the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EAASH, Paris).

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Crystal Growth of Nanomaterials

24 Nov 2021

We are delighted to share with you our latest themed collection Crystal Growth of Nanomaterials. This themed issue is focused on recent advances in the understanding and control of crystal growth mechanisms and processes of nanomaterials and was guest edited by Professor Dongfeng Xue, Multiscale Crystal Materials Research Center, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China; Professor Georg Garnweitner, Institute for Particle Technology and Laboratory for Emerging Nanometrology, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany and Professor Kwangyeol Lee, Department of Chemistry, Research Institute for Natural Sciences, Korea University, Republic of Korea.

Selected articles from the issue:

Colloidal chemical bottom-up synthesis routes of pnictogen (As, Sb, Bi) nanostructures with tailored properties and applications: a summary of the state of the art and main insights Stefanos Mourdikoudis and Zdeněk Sofer https://doi.org/10.1039/D0CE01766C
Surface-directed ZnGa₂O₄ and β-Ga₂O₃ nanofins coated with a non-polar GaN shell based on the Kirkendall effect Babak Nikoobakht, Aaron C. Johnston-Peck, David Laleyan, Ping Wang and Zetian Mi https://doi.org/10.1039/D1CE00744K
*Spin crossover crystalline materials engineered via* single-crystal-to-single-crystal transformations Shufang Xue, Yunnan Guo and Yann Garcia https://doi.org/10.1039/D1CE00234A**

About CrystEngComm

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

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Host‒Guest chemistry: in honour of Luigi Nassimbeni’s 9th decade

15 Oct 2021

By Michelle Canning.

The latest CrystEngComm themed collection, Host‒Guest chemistry: in honour of Luigi Nassimbeni’s 9th decade is now online! Guest edited by Associate Editor, Professor Susan Bourne, University of Cape Town, South Africa; Professor Len Barbour, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and Professor Nikoletta Bathori, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa, this collection aims to pay tribute to the remarkable achievements of Luigi Nassimbeni as he enters his 9th decade, and to celebrate him as an esteemed mentor, whose ideas and advancement of host-guest chemistry live on in successive generations of supramolecular chemists.

Host-guest chemistry has developed into a broad and exciting field of study, expanding rapidly from its early beginnings in the 1980s. From the study of inclusion compounds, this area of endeavour has evolved to encompass polymorphism, solid-state reactivity, multicomponent crystals, and mechanochemistry, with applications in separation, catalysis, chemical sensors and nanotechnology.

Luigi Nassimbeni has been highly influential in the development of this field, from early studies on hydrogen-bonded synthons, to advances in the separation of closely related organic compounds. Over the years, Luigi Nassimbeni has mentored many students who have gone on to establish their own independent careers in the field. He has played a significant role in the development of solid-state chemistry in South Africa, particularly with regard to X-ray diffraction, and through his early application of thermal analysis to the study of inclusion compounds. He was ahead of his time when he proposed, during the 1980’s, that it might be possible to activate some molecular crystals to yield porous structures for guest inclusion. This collection highlights his recent publications in CrystEngComm, as well as other recent articles on the topic of host-guest chemstry, along with new submissions from colleagues around the world.

See the full collection here

If you have primary research in the area of Host‒Guest chemistry ready for publication submit to CrystEngComm – see our author guidelines for information on our article types or find out more about the advantages of publishing in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

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Editor’s Collection: Imperfect nanocrystals for perfect catalysis

03 Aug 2021

We are delighted to share with you our latest collection of recently published articles focusing on Imperfect nanocrystals for perfect catalysis handpicked by Associate Editor, Kwangyeol Lee, Korea University, Korea.

Vacancies, dopants, and defects are synonymous with imperfect atom ordering in crystalline materials. While dopants have been extensively exploited to fine-tune the material properties of semiconductors, the relevance of atom vacancies and defects to the activity and stability of nanoparticle-based catalysts has been recognized only recently. Intentional disturbance in the atom ordering in nanocatalysts has led to the development of nanocatalysts with exceptional catalytic activity and stability. However, the ability for controlled introduction of defects and vacancies to the desired locations and amounts, while maintaining the nanoparticle material phase is only at the fledgling stage, not to mention our understanding of the true origin of the superb catalytic performance of them. This selection of articles would point to the importance of imperfect nanocrystals to the development of perfect nanocatalysts.

These articles are all free to access until September 30^th, 2021 and we hope you enjoy reading them.

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

Selected articles:

Recent advances in transition metal based compound catalysts for water splitting from the perspective of crystal engineering Min Ju, Xiaoting Wang, Xia Long and Shihe Yang *CrystEngComm,* 2020,22, 1531-1540
Cu-Deficient plasmonic Cu_2−xS nanocrystals induced tunable photocatalytic activities Xiao Shao, Tianyong Zhang, Bin Li, Yue Wu, Xiaoyuan Ma, Jingchao Wang and Shuang Jiang *CrystEngComm,* 2020,22, 678-685
Few-layered CuInP₂S₆ nanosheet with sulfur vacancy boosting photocatalytic hydrogen evolution Peng Yu, Fengmei Wang, Jun Meng, Tofik Ahmed Shifa, Marshet Getaye Sendeku, Ju Fang, Shuxian Li, Zhongzhou Cheng, Xiaoding Lou and Jun He *CrystEngComm,* 2021,23, 591-598

Meet the Editor

Kwangyeol Lee is Professor of chemistry at Korea University. He graduated from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (1992) and obtained a PhD degree (1997) in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign under the supervision of Professor John R. Shapley. After fulfilling his Korean military obligations he joined Korea University in 2003 as an Assistant Professor. During his independent research career, he has studied nanocrystal growth, phase conversions in nanoscale as well as nanoparticle applications. He has contributed over 180 papers to the fields of Organometallic Chemistry and Nanochemistry. 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).

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Editor’s Collection: Halogen Bonding in Crystal Engineering

06 May 2021

We are delighted to share with you our latest collection of recently published articles focusing on Halogen Bonding in Crystal Engineering, handpicked by Chair of the Editorial Board, Pierangelo Metrangolo, Politecnico di Milano, Italy.

The halogen bond is the attractive interaction between an electrophilic region associated with a halogen atom in a molecular entity and a nucleophilic region in another, or the same, molecular entity. Since its rediscovery in the early 2000s, the field of halogen bonding has boomed, becoming one of the most used chemical interactions in crystal engineering. This Editor’s collection highlights recent contributions to CrystEngComm that are broadly focused on halogen bonding in crystal engineering. The selection of articles showcases how the field has developed from the design of crystal structures to the development of functional materials. The wide range of halogen bond applications covers phosphorescent materials, pharmaceutical co-crystals and peptides, organic electronics, coordination frameworks, where the halogen bonds either drive the formation of the network, or stabilize it as a secondary interaction, or is used to bind hosted guests. Halogen bonding has become a mature field of research but its rediscovery has sparked interest towards other lesser known interactions, which are anticipated to become more prominent in the future, such as chalcogen, pnictogen, and tetrel bonds.

All of these articles are free to access until June 30^th 2021 and we hope you enjoy reading them.

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

Selected articles:

Halogen bonded metal bis(dithiolene) 2D frameworks Hadi Hachem, Olivier Jeannin, Marc Fourmigué, Frédéric Barrière and Dominique Lorcy *CrystEngComm*, 2020, 22, 3579-3587
Two-dimensional halogen-bonded organic frameworks based on the tetrabromobenzene-1,4-dicarboxylic acid building molecule Nucharee Chongboriboon, Kodchakorn Samakun, Thitirat Inprasit, Filip Kielar, Winya Dungkaew, Lawrence W.-Y. Wong, Herman H.-Y. Sung, Dragan B. Ninković, Snežana D. Zarić and Kittipong Chainok *CrystEngComm,* 2020, 22, 24-34
Halogen bonding in 5-iodo-1-arylpyrazoles investigated in the solid state and predicted by solution ¹³C-NMR spectroscopy Marcel Mirel Popa, Isabela Costinela Man, Constantin Draghici, Sergiu Shova, Mino R. Caira, Florea Dumitrascu and Denisa Dumitrescu *CrystEngComm,* 2019, 7085-7093

Meet the Editor

Pierangelo Metrangolo (Lecce, 16 April 1972) has been a full Professor at the Politecnico di Milano since 2011. He also holds a part-time position at the VTT-Technical Research Centre of Finland and from 2015 has been a visiting professor at the Aalto University, Finland. He is co-editor of Acta Crystallographica, section B and is Chair of the Editorial Board of CrystEngComm and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Crystal Growth and Design.

He is author of 185 publications with 9266 citations (h-index: 49), 10 chapters in international books and holds 11 patents. He has given 45 invited lectures at national and international meetings and 26 invited seminars at universities and research institutes. He is currently Titular Member of the Physical and Biophysical Chemistry Division of the IUPAC. Since 2013 he is the holder of a European Research Council grant to carry with the project “FOLDHALO – Folding with Halogen Bonding”.

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HOT Articles – Online and free to access now

12 Apr 2021