Crystal engineering articles from across Nature Portfolio

The development of supramolecular porous crystalline frameworks with architectures from secondary building units remains challenging. Here, the authors report ammonium node-assembled clusters as supramolecular secondary building units to sustain a body centered cubic hydrogenbonded framework with octahedral cages for haloform encapsulation and reversible photochromism.

Organic co-crystals are useful in the fabrication of functional materials, but it is challenging to achieve structural diversity of co-crystals. Here, the authors report nine sets of macrocycle cocrystals with diverse structures and stoichiometric ratios giving different luminescence properties.

Liquid crystal elastomers are shape-morphing materials that demonstrate reversible actuation when exposed to external stimuli, and their actuation depends heavily on the liquid crystal alignment programmed into these materials, using various shape-programming processes. Here, the author reviews current shape-programming methods in relation to the challenges of employing liquid crystal elastomers as soft, shape-memory components in devices in the future.

Globally important BTEX hydrocarbons are separated using a T-shaped host with the shape and crystal tiling characteristics of a pentomino. A strategy based on designing and applying crystalline molecular ominos to perform separations of hydrocarbons and other environmentally-relevant compounds is outlined.

Thermally activated delayed fluorescence materials with full-colour tunability are desirable but challenging to prepare. Here, the authors report a method for preparing such materials through the design of host-guest cocrystals with through-space charge transfer.

Cocrystal engineering combined with macrocycle chemistry has allowed the development of materials with vapochromic characteristics. Here, the authors report the development of a macrocycle cocrystal for the separation of trace solvents.

A decade ago, Zaworotko and co-workers engaged the principles of crystal engineering to demonstrate that narrow-pore (<0.7 nm) coordination networks are ideal sorbent platforms for small-molecule sorbates. This approach transformed sorbent design for such separations and has provided several performance benchmarks in trace gas capture-enabled purifications.

Systems that feature long-range order but no translational periodicity are intriguing. Now, a T-shaped molecule consisting of three non-miscible components has been devised that self-assembles into a columnar liquid quasicrystal.

An article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society reports azobenzene crystals that roll continuously under visible light, thanks to crystal packing effects that shift azobenzene’s light-responsive window.

The rational synthesis of advanced porous materials that mimic the behaviours of biological proteins remains challenging. Now, a distinct type of crystalline porous peptide framework has been prepared through bioinspired noncovalent assembly, enabling chemical tuning of the properties and functions of the pore environments.

The halide perovskite family has, arguably, become today’s most promising emerging materials sets for optoelectronic applications. Here, we discuss the underperformance to date of the colloidal nanocrystal forms of these materials when employed in electroluminescent lighting devices relative to their counterparts, in which the emitter layer is in the form of polycrystalline films. However, we highlight the bright future of halide perovskite colloidal nanocrystals in light-emission technologies such as LCD displays, quantum light sources and even alternative LED configurations, as well as key guidelines for their further development to get there.

Thirty years ago the assembly of molecular ‘tectons’ into organic networks with large chambers using directional non-covalent interactions — hydrogen bonds — provided a blueprint for the synthesis of porous functional materials through crystal engineering.