CrystEngComm Blog

The scientists in this CrystEngComm Hot article have developed an impressive way to seperate carboxylic acids from fuels.

This is especially important with fuels produced from renewable biomass, where product removal enhances microbial growth and production. But the conventionally used technique to remove products by inducing crystallisation, does not work efficiently for carboxylic acids.

Johan Urbanus and colleagues based in the Netherlands, used electrochemistry to manipulate the pH to obtain neutral carboxylic acids, and used co-crystals to control the solubility to remove them. As the referees of this paper commented, this is an elegant use of electrochemical principles in cocrystallisation and product removal.

READ FOR FREE until 12th January

Electrochemically induced co-crystallization for product removal
Johan Urbanus, C. P. Mark Roelands, Jaroslaw Mazurek, Dirk Verdoes and Joop H. ter Horst
CrystEngComm, 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0CE00284D, Communication

In this CrystEngComm Hot article, (001)-oriented BaTiO3/LaNiO3 superlattics are made by a radio frequency sputtering method.

Liang Qiao and Xiaofang Bi noticed a dielectric anomaly in their superlattices; they observed that the  dielectric maxima shifted towards higher temperatures with an increase in frequency. Read on to see how they explain their results, and to find out more about the dielectric properties and phase transition characteristics of their BaTiO3/LaNiO3 superlattices.

Dielectric phase transition and relaxor behavior in BaTiO3/LaNiO3 superlattice
Liang Qiao and Xiaofang Bi
CrystEngComm, 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0CE00665C, Paper

In this CrystEngComm Hot article, scientists at Harbin Normal University, China, made ZnO nanoplates by introducing Al³⁺ to change the growth and thickness of the nanostructures. Their method is particularly interesting as they do not use a template or surfactant.

One-step hydrothermal synthesis and optical properties of aluminium doped ZnO hexagonal nanoplates on a zinc substrate
Jia Liu, Lingling Xu, Bo Wei, Wei Lv, Hong Gao and Xitian Zhang
CrystEngComm, 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0CE00704H, Communication

In this CrystEngComm Hot Article, Lee Brammer and colleagues look at making crystalline copper compounds mechanochemically, examining both solid-solid and solid-gas systems. The solid-gas reaction was monitored in situ using synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction and a specially designed gas-handling rig meaning that polymorphs formed during the reaction could be identified!

Synthesis and polymorphism of (4-ClpyH)2[CuCl4]: solid–gas and solid–solid reactions 
Iñigo J. Vitorica-Yrezabal, Rachel A. Sullivan, Stephen L. Purver, Caroline Curfs, Chiu C. Tang and Lee Brammer
CrystEngComm, 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0CE00628A, Paper

For the first time, metal-organic nanotubes have been made using a hydrogen-bonding self-assembly approach.

Jianlin Han and Yi Pan and colleagues from Nanjing University, China, used specially designed ligands to control the hydrogen bonding, constructing 2D layered structures that self-assembled into nanotubes. Such materials are exciting for their potential for use as molecular capillaries and sieves, and for use in biological models.

This CrystEngComm Hot article is free to read for a limited period.

Hydrogen-bonding self-assembly of two dimensional (2D) layer structures generating metal–organic nanotubes
Hailong Sun, Haibo Mei, Guanghui An, Jianlin Han and Yi Pan
CrystEngComm, 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0CE00471E , Communication

READ FOR FREE until January