Crystallography matters ... more!

A minisymposium on “Designer Molecular Crystals: Mechanical and Functional Properties” was held in the Solid State and Structural Unit of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India on 14th November, 2014 as a part of the IYCr celebrations in India, and was chaired by Prof. Gautam R. Desiraju, immediate past president of IUCr.
Considerable progress has been made in recent times in understanding the relationships between crystal structure and mechanical properties of molecular materials. The purpose of the symposium was to discuss recent advances in this sub-field of crystal engineering and to identify future directions for research in this area. Five scientists drawn from various institutions in India and Abu Dhabi and working actively in this area made presentations and more than 40 delegates from different places of India participated. The topics that they covered in this half day minisymposium ranged from structure-property correlations in photosalient, thermosalient, bending, brittle, elastic, mechanochromic, and bio-inspired crystals, as well as the ubiquitous use of the nanoindentation technique to characterize the solids used in these studies.

From left to right: Pance Naumov (NYU, Abu Dhabi), U. Ramamurty (IISc, Bangalore), C. Malla Reddy (IISER, Kolkata), T. Govindaraju (JNCASR, Bangalore), Sunil Varughese (NIIST, Thiruvananthapuram) and Gautam R. Desiraju (IISc, Bangalore).

Programme

P. Naumov, Exotic mechanical properties of materials: A chemist perspective
U. Ramamurty, Nanoindentation for identifying intergrowth polymorphism
C. Malla Reddy, Understanding the mechanical flexibility of organic single crystals on the basis of their structural chemistry
T. Govindaraju, Engineering peptide assemblies for functional and mechanical properties
S. Varughese, Stress-induced long range molecular migration in organic crystals

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