Publications related to Non-equilibrium phonon dynamics studied by grazing-incidence femtosecond X-ray crystallography

The rule of four: anomalous distributions in the stoichiometries of inorganic compounds

Nicola Marzari, Carl Simon Adorf, Marnik Bercx, Elena Gazzarrini

Why are materials with specific characteristics more abundant than others? This is a fundamental question in materials science and one that is traditionally difficult to tackle, given the vastness of compositional and configurational space. We highlight he ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Ru(II)-Arene Complexes of Curcumin and Bisdesmethoxycurcumin Metabolites

Paul Joseph Dyson, Farzaneh Fadaei Tirani, Mouna Hadiji

Curcuminoids and their complexes continue to attract attention in medicinal chemistry, but little attention has been given to their metabolic derivatives. Here, the first examples of (arene)Ru(II) complexes with curcuminoid metabolites, tetrahydrocurcumin ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

Beyond the coupled distortion model: structural analysis of the single domain cupredoxin AcoP, a green mononuclear copper centre with original features

Luciano Andres Abriata

Cupredoxins are widely occurring copper-binding proteins with a typical Greek-key beta barrel fold. They are generally described as electron carriers that rely on a T1 copper centre coordinated by four ligands provided by the folded polypeptide. The discov ...

Royal Soc Chemistry2024

Mapping orthorhombic domains with geometrical phase analysis in rare-earth nickelate heterostructures

Jean-Marc Triscone, Duncan Thomas Lindsay Alexander, Bernat Mundet

Most perovskite oxides belong to the Pbnm space group, composed of an anisotropic unit cell, A-site antipolar displacements, and oxygen octahedral tilts. Mapping the orientation of the orthorhombic unit cell in epitaxial heterostructures that consist of at ...

Aip Publishing2024

Controlling crystal cleavage in focused ion beam shaped specimens for surface spectroscopy

Philip Johannes Walter Moll, Matthias Carsten Putzke, Andrew Scott Hunter

Our understanding of quantum materials is commonly based on precise determinations of their electronic spectrum by spectroscopic means, most notably angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and scanning tunneling microscopy. Both require atomicall ...

Aip Publishing2024

Confinement-Controlled Crystallization of Guanine

Esther Amstad, Chuen-Ru Li

Guanine crystals are frequently encountered in nature in the beta-polymorph to create structural colors, to enhance the vision of creatures, and for camouflage. Unfortunately, it is challenging to control the crystallization of guanine in aqueous condition ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

How Reproducible is the Synthesis of Zr-Porphyrin Metal-Organic Frameworks? An Interlaboratory Study

Jocelyn Richard Roth, Wendy Lee Queen, Rawan Al Natour

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a rapidly growing class of materials that offer great promise in various applications. However, the synthesis remains challenging: for example, a range of crystal structures can often be accessed from the same building b ...

Wiley-V C H Verlag Gmbh2024

Plasmonically enhanced molecular junctions for investigation of atomic-scale fluctuations in self-assembled monolayers

Sakthi Priya Amirtharaj

Molecular junctions represent a fascinating frontier in the realm of nanotechnology and are one of the smallest optoelectronic devices possible, consisting of individual molecules or a group of molecules that serve as the active element sandwiched between ...

EPFL2024

Molecular intercalation in the van der Waals antiferromagnets FePS3 and NiPS3

Bruce Normand, Xiaoyu Xu, Sheng Xu, Ying Chen, Zeyu Wang, Shuo Li, Weiqiang Yu

We have performed electrochemical treatment of the van der Waals antiferromagnetic materials FePS3 and NiPS3 with the ionic liquid EMIM-BF4, achieving significant molecular intercalation. Mass analysis of the intercalated compounds, EMIMx-FePS3 and EMIMx-N ...

Amer Physical Soc2024

A data-driven interpretation of the stability of organic molecular crystals

Michele Ceriotti, Edgar Albert Engel, Maria Pakhnova

Due to the subtle balance of intermolecular interactions that govern structure-property relations, predicting the stability of crystal structures formed from molecular building blocks is a highly non-trivial scientific problem. A particularly active and fr ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2023

Pressure-freezing of dodecane: exploring the crystal structures, formation kinetics and phase diagrams for colossal barocaloric effects in n-alkanes

Tomasz Poreba

Barocaloric (BC) materials provide cheaper and more energy efficient alternatives to traditional refrigerants. Some liquid alkanes were recently shown to exhibit a colossal BC effect, matching the entropy changes in commercial vapour-liquid refrigerants. D ...

Royal Soc Chemistry2023

Murunskite - a new class of functional material

Davor Tolj

The subject of the present work is discovery and in-depth characterization of a new class of functional materials. Tuning of the bond polarity and orbital occupation with a goal of establishing balance between localization and delocalization of electrons - ...

EPFL2023

Direct Observation of the Phase Transition in C60 Fullerene

Chengcheng Yan

In the third study, the order-disorder phase transition of single-crystal C60 is studied using time-resolved electron microscopy. Solid C60 undergoes a first-order phase transition upon heating to 260 K. This is a structural transition from the low-tempera ...

EPFL Infoscience2023

Atomic scale volume and grain boundary diffusion elucidated by in situ STEM

Johann Michler, Amit Sharma, Laszlo Pethö, Xavier Maeder

Diffusion is one of the most important phenomena studied in science ranging from physics to biology and, in abstract form, even in social sciences. In the field of materials science, diffusion in crystalline solids is of particular interest as it plays a p ...

Nature Portfolio2023

In Situ and Time-Resolved Transmission Electron Microscopy of Nanoscale Processes

Chengcheng Yan

Observing the fast dynamics of nanoscale systems is crucial in order to understand and ultimately control their behavior. Characterizing these dynamic processes requires techniques with atomic spatial resolution and a temporal resolution that matches the t ...

EPFL2023

Controlling the crystal structure of succinic acid via microfluidic spray-drying

Aysu Ceren Okur, Esther Amstad

Many properties of materials, including their dissolution kinetics, hardness, and optical appearance, depend on their structure. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to control the structure of low molecular weight organic compounds that have a high propen ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2023

What do we talk about, when we talk about single-crystal termination-dependent selectivity of Cu electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction? A data-driven retrospective

Kevin Rossi

We mine from the literature experimental data on the CO2 electrochemical reduction selectivity of Cu single crystal surfaces. We then probe the accuracy of a machine learning model trained to predict faradaic efficiencies for 11 CO2 reduction reaction prod ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2023

Melting pseudosymmetry and thermal expansion in 3-benzoylpropionic acid

Tomasz Poreba

The thermal behavior of 3-benzoylpropionic acid (BPA) was investigated using single-crystal and synchrotron powder X-diffraction, as well as differential scanning calorimetry analysis. The study revealed the existence of two subtly distinct structures of B ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2023

Selectively permeable microcapsules

Chuen-Ru Li

Microcapsules are appealing containers for delivering active ingredients, such as drugs and cosmetics, or conducting chemical and biological reactions on a small scale. To control the timing and location of release of these encapsulants, the shells of micr ...

EPFL2023

NMR Crystallography in the Big Data Era: New Methods and Applications Powered by Machine Learning

Manuel Cordova

Structure determination of materials is key to understanding their physical properties. While single-crystal X-ray diffraction is the gold standard for structures displaying long-range order, many materials of interest are polycrystalline and/or disordered ...

EPFL2023