CrystEngComm Blog

Hydrogels for studying biomineralisation

23 Jul 2012

This article is HOT as recommended by the referees. And we’ve made it free to access for 4 weeks.

Hydrogel-based double-diffusion systems for studying biomineralization

This Highlight presents an overview of hydrogel-based double-diffusion systems to study biomineralization. The authors describe two types of diffusion systems: static and dynamic. They evaluated four such systems to design an optimized system taking into account the type of hydrogel, the boundary conditions and design strategy.

Gels represent a good model to study and understand biomineralization because the mineral deposition that occurs in many mineralization processes in vivo takes place in gelling environments; however, they are not often used due to their complexity and poor knowledge of ionic diffusion.

Read more about biomineralisation for FREE at:

Rediscovering hydrogel-based double-diffusion systems for studying biomineralization
Jason R. Dorvee , Adele L. Boskey and Lara A. Estroff
CrystEngComm, 2012, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C2CE25289A

Other articles by Lara A. Estroff and co-workers which may also be of interest are:

Gel incorporation inside of organic single crystals grown in agarose hydrogels
Hanying Li, Yuzo Fujiki, Kazuki Sada and Lara A. Estroff
CrystEngComm, 2011, 13, 1060-1062
DOI: 10.1039/C0CE00118J, Communication

Porous calcite single crystals grown from a hydrogel medium
Hanying Li and Lara A. Estroff
CrystEngComm, 2007, 9, 1153-1155
DOI: 10.1039/B709068D, Communication
From themed issue: CrystEngComm focuses on biomineralisation

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Facile, economical and magnetically recoverable photo-Fenton’s reagent

20 Jul 2012

By Matthew Cude, Development Editor.

Zhijun Luo, Xiangyang Wu et al. have recently developed a facile one-step route to generate magnetite/carboxylate-rich carbon spheres exhibiting excellent photodegradation properties, without the need of H₂O₂ or UV light.

Wastewater can contain many contaminants including a wide range of organic material; the photo-Fenton reaction is a highly efficient way to oxidise these pollutants using Fe³⁺, H₂O₂ and UV light to generate^.OH radicals.

The materials reported here are highly water-dispersible, easy to make and operate under visible light across a wide pH range. The magnetite/carboxylate-rich carbon spheres can also be recovered magnetically making this a convenient reaction to use.

A schematic illustration of the magnetite/carboxylate-rich carbon spheres (MCRCS) generating hydroxyl radicals under visible light in water.

You can take a look at how the particles particles behave under applied magnetic fields in these videos, pure nano magnetite in water and magnetite/carboxylate-rich carbon spheres in water.

You can also download the full communication, which is free to access for 4 weeks
A visible-light-driven solid state photo-Fenton reagent based on magnetite/carboxylate-rich carbon spheres
Zhijun Luo, Hongjun Tang, Lingling Qu, Tingting Han and Xiangyang Wu

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July Crystal Clear: Crystal Cavern

12 Jul 2012

By Matthew Cude, Development Editor.

An image taken through an optical microscope of L-arginine acetate grown using a 'Metal-Assisted and Microwave-Accelerated Evaporative Crystallization’ process.

The beautiful image in this month’s crystal clear isn’t actually a crystal cavern. It is crystals of L-arginine acetate grown using a new crystallisation technique. The crystals are of particular interest in non-linear optics given their second harmonic generation properties.

The Aslan Research Group have developed a new crystallisation method to grow L-arginine acetate crystals much faster than the previously reported cooling/evaporation method. The ‘Metal-Assisted and Microwave-Accelerated Evaporative Crystallization’ process uses silver island films and low power microwave heating to grow the crystals quickly. The team also investigated functionalising the metal nucleation surface to see if this enhanced crystal growth.

The image shown here is of the crystals created using bare silver island films and microwaves, the rest of the teams results, including full details of their growth process can be found in Issue 14 of CrystEngComm.

Rapid crystallization of L-arginine acetate on engineered surfaces using metal-assisted and microwave-accelerated evaporative crystallization
Melissa A. Pinard, Tsehai A. J. Grell, Danielle Pettis, Muzaffer Mohammed and Kadir Aslan

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This months CrystEngSelects

11 Jul 2012

By Matthew Cude, Development Editor.

Here is this month’s selection of Advance Articles and Accepted Manuscripts of interest to crystal engineers across RSC Journals

Articles are chosen from:
ChemComm,
Chemical Science,
CrystEngComm,
Dalton Transactions,
Journal of Materials Chemistry,
Nanoscale,
New Journal of Chemistry,
RSC Advances.

CLick here to expand the full list

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Competing cocrystals: Hydrogen-bonding vs. Halogen-bonding

05 Jul 2012

By Matthew Cude, Development Editor.

This article is HOT as recommended by the referees. And we’ve made it free to access for 4 weeks.

Tomislav Friscic and colleagues report a cocrystal system that bonds by either hydrogen or halogen bonding depending on the stoichiometric ratio of the two components of the crystal. Interactions within crystal structures such as hydrogen bonding, ionic bonds, van der Waals forces and pi-interactions determine a material’s structure and properties.

Understanding these interactions and engineering crystals with specific structures is important, the ability to switch the interaction between hydrogen and halogen bonds by altering the ratio of molecules is an interesting discovery and helps establish the role halogen bonds play in molecular self-assembly.

Switching between halogen- and hydrogen-bonding in stoichiometric variations of a cocrystal of a phosphine oxide
Se Ye Oh, Christopher W. Nickels, Felipe Garcia, William Jones and Tomislav Friščić

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Advisory Board Member Lee Cronin wins Corday Morgan Prize

03 Jul 2012

By Matthew Cude, Development Editor.

Lee Cronin is the Gardiner Professor of Chemistry at the School of Chemistry, University of Glasgow and on the Advisory Board of CrystEngComm.

The RSC recognises outstanding members of the chemical science community through its wide range of awards, you can see the full list of RSC 2012 winners here.

Lee is recognized for his creative studies in the field of inorganic chemistry, specifically the self-assembly and self-organization of inorganic molecules and the engineering of complex systems leading to the emergence of system-level behaviours.

His award citation is for “his outstanding work on the self-assembly of inorganic molecules and the engineering of complex systems”. Congratulations Lee from all at CrystEngComm!

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CrystEngComm impact factor released!

03 Jul 2012

By Matthew Cude, Development Editor.

The 2011 Journal Citation Reports ® (Thomson Reuters, 2012) have been released and CrystEngComm has received a 5 year impact factor* of 4.02 and an Immediacy Index** of 0.844, the highest Immediacy Index for any crystal engineering journal!

We would like to thank all our authors, readers and referees who have contributed towards this success. Our thanks also go to our Editorial and Advisory Board Members and our Associate Editors for all their hard work and dedication to the journal.

A full list of RSC successes can be found at the RSC Impact Factor release.

For more information about CrystEngComm, including how to submit your research, check out the journal homepage.

*A 5-year impact factor is the average number of times articles from a journal published in the past five years have been cited in the JCR year. It is calculated by taking the number of citations in the JCR year to articles published in the preceding 5 years and dividing by the number of articles published in the previous 5 years.

** The Immediacy Index is a measure of how topical and urgent work published in a scientific journal is. It is measured by dividing the number of citations made to articles in a journal in a given year by the number of citeable articles published in the journal for the same year.

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Halogen bonding themed issue – submit now

02 Jul 2012

By Fiona McKenzie, Executive Editor.

Submissions are now open for the CrystEngComm themed issue: Halogen bond: From self-assembly to materials and biomolecules.

The themed issue due to be published in 2013 is being guest edited by William Pennington (Clemson University), Giuseppe Resnati (Politecnico di Milano) and Mark Taylor (University of Toronto).

We are looking for manuscripts focused on theoretical and experimental studies of the physical, chemical, and biological phenomena and processes related to the design, growth, and application of crystalline materials wherein halogen bonding plays a key-role.

If you think you have something suitable then why not submit now or contact us for more information.

All manuscripts must be in accordance with CrystEngComm’s author guidelines and scope and will be peer-reviewed in the usual way. Inclusion in the themed issue is at the discretion of the guest editors.

Submission deadline: 23^rd October 2012

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Top ten most accessed articles in May

27 Jun 2012

By Kate Bandoo, Publishing Assistant.

This month sees the following articles in CrystEngComm that are in the top ten most accessed:-

Porous metal–organic framework based on a macrocyclic tetracarboxylate ligand exhibiting selective CO2 uptake
Wen-Yang Gao , Youhong Niu , Yao Chen , Lukasz Wojtas , Jianfeng Cai , Yu-Sheng Chen and Shengqian Ma
CrystEngComm, 2012, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C2CE25484K

Coordination polymers, metal–organic frameworks and the need for terminology guidelines
Stuart R. Batten , Neil R. Champness , Xiao-Ming Chen , Javier Garcia-Martinez , Susumu Kitagawa , Lars Öhrström , Michael O’Keeffe , Myunghyun Paik Suh and Jan Reedijk
CrystEngComm, 2012,14, 3001-3004 DOI: 10.1039/C2CE06488J

NiO nanomaterials: controlled fabrication, formation mechanism and the application in lithium-ion battery
Jianmin Ma , Jiaqin Yang , Lifang Jiao , Yuhua Mao , Taihong Wang , Xiaochuan Duan , Jiabiao Lian and Wenjun Zheng
CrystEngComm, 2012,14, 453-459 DOI: 10.1039/C1CE05567D

Layer-by-layer assembly of supramolecular hexagonal blocks driven by CH–p and p–p interactions
Muhammad Moazzam Naseer and Shahid Hameed
CrystEngComm, 2012,14, 4247-4250 DOI: 10.1039/C2CE25118C

Recent advances in porphyrinic metal–organic frameworks: materials design, synthetic strategies, and emerging applications
Brandon J. Burnett , Paul M. Barron and Wonyoung Choe
CrystEngComm, 2012,14, 3839-3846 DOI: 10.1039/C2CE06692K

Synthesis of Mn3O4 nanowires and their transformation to LiMn2O4 polyhedrons, application of LiMn2O4 as a cathode in a lithium-ion battery
Xing Zhang , Zheng Xing , Yang Yu , Qianwen Li , Kaibin Tang , Tao Huang , Yongchun Zhu , Yitai Qian and Dong Chen
CrystEngComm, 2012,14, 1485-1489 DOI: 10.1039/C1CE06289A

Two unprecedented strontium(ii) and cadmium(ii) MOFs constructed from 2-naphthyl imidazole dicarboxylate ligand
Mengwei Guo , Nan Chen , Zhifang Yue , Yu Zhang and Gang Li
CrystEngComm, 2012, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C2CE25314C

Stabilization of O–Mn–O clusters (Mn5) in three dimensionally extended MOF structures: synthesis, structure and properties
Saurav Bhattacharya , K. V. Ramanujachary , S. E. Lofland , Travis Magdaleno and Srinivasan Natarajan
CrystEngComm, 2012,14, 4323-4334 DOI: 10.1039/C2CE06386G

Two metal–organic frameworks with unique high-connected binodal network topologies: synthesis, structures, and catalytic properties
Guang-Hua Cui , Cui-Hong He , Cui-Huan Jiao , Jian-Chen Geng and Vladislav A. Blatov
CrystEngComm, 2012,14, 4210-4216 DOI: 10.1039/C2CE25264C

Controllable hydrothermal synthesis of manganese dioxide nanostructures: shape evolution, growth mechanism and electrochemical properties
Xiaochuan Duan , Jiaqin Yang , Haiyan Gao , Jianmin Ma , Lifang Jiao and Wenjun Zheng
CrystEngComm, 2012,14, 4196-4204 DOI: 10.1039/C2CE06587H

Why not take a look at the articles today and blog your thoughts and comments below.

Fancy submitting an article to CrystEngComm? Then why not submit to us today or alternatively email us your suggestions.

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Single-crystal study on brownmillerite type frameworks

22 Jun 2012

By Jennifer Newton, Publishing Editor.

This article is HOT as recommended by the referees. And we’ve made it free to access for 4 weeks.

Werner Paulus and colleagues report on studies into low temperature oxygen mobility in terms of anisotropic oxygen in brownmillerite type frameworks. By using a floating zone method they were able to optimise the paramaters so as to obtain large and homogenous crystals of CaFeO_2.5 that were essential for detailed structural and lattic dynamic studies. Understanding oxygen mobility in non-stoichiometric perovskites will aid the development of electrolytes in solid-oxide fuel cells which currently work at high temperatures but low temperature conditions would be preferable.

Typical CaFeO2.5 crytals obtained in this study were 120 mm long and had a shiny, silver-blck surface with metallic luster.

Typical CaFeO2.5 crystals obtained in this study were 120 mm long and had a shiny, silver-black surface with metallic luster.

Download the paper to find out more…

Growth and characterization of large high quality brownmillerite CaFeO_2.5 single crystals
Monica Ceretti, Andrea Piovano, Alain Cousson, Tanguy Berthier, Martin Meven, Giovanni Agostini, Jurg Schefer, Olivier Hernandez, Carlo Lamberti and Werner Paulus
CrystEngComm, 2012
DOI: 10.1039/C2CE25413A

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CrystEngComm Blog

Hydrogels for studying biomineralisation

Facile, economical and magnetically recoverable photo-Fenton’s reagent

July Crystal Clear: Crystal Cavern

This months CrystEngSelects

Competing cocrystals: Hydrogen-bonding vs. Halogen-bonding

Advisory Board Member Lee Cronin wins Corday Morgan Prize

CrystEngComm impact factor released!

Halogen bonding themed issue – submit now

Top ten most accessed articles in May

Single-crystal study on brownmillerite type frameworks

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