High-pressure single-crystal X-ray diffraction facilities on station 9.8 at the SRS Daresbury Laboratory--hydrogen location in the high-pressure structure of ethanol

The structural, electronic and optical properties of γ-glycine under pressure: a first principles study

The crystallized amino acid γ-glycine is a large band gap insulator that shows promise in the fields of photonics and non-linear optics. To better understand its physical properties, the effect of pressure on the structural, electronic and optical properties of γ-glycine were investigated through a first principles calculation approach based on density functional theory. A band gap of 5.026 eV was found and was shown to decrease with an increase of pressure, due to the widening of the conduction and valence bands. The densities of states verify the observations made in the band structure and exhibit that the conduction bands are dominated by the O 2p and C 2p orbitals. The absorption spectra for γ-glycine was calculated using many-body Green's functions GW and reveals a slight blueshift in the absorption spectra. The information presented in this paper might be useful in better understanding the structural and optical properties of γ-glycine for future application.

Structural and Dielectric Relaxations in Vitreous and Liquid State of Monohydroxy Alcohol at High Pressure

2-Ethyl-1-hexanol monoalcohol is a well-known molecular glassformer, which for a long time attracts attention of researchers. As in all other monohydroxy alcohols, its dielectric relaxation reveals two distinct relaxation processes attributed to the structural relaxation and another more intense process, which gives rise to a low-frequency Debye-like relaxation. In this monoalcohol, the frequency separation between these two processes reaches an extremely high value of 3 orders of magnitude, which makes this substance a rather convenient object for studies of mechanisms (supposedly common to all monoalcohols) leading to vitrification of this type of liquids. In this work, we apply two experimental techniques, dielectric spectroscopy and ultrasonic measurements (in both longitudinal and transverse polarizations) at high pressure, to study interference between different relaxation mechanisms occurring in this liquid, which could shed light on both structural and dielectric relaxation processes observed in a supercooled liquid and a glass state. Application of high pressure in this case leads to the simplification of the frequency spectrum of dielectric relaxation, where only one asymmetric feature is observed. Nonetheless, the maximum attenuation of the longitudinal wave in ultrasonic experiments at high pressure is observed at temperatures ≈50 K above the corresponding temperature for the transverse wave. This might indicate different mechanisms of structural relaxation in shear and bulk elasticities in this liquid.

Structure prediction of the solid forms of methanol: an ab initio random structure searching approach

Liquid methanol and methanol clusters have been comprehensively studied to reveal their local structure and hydrogen bond networks.

Crystallization and vitrification of ethanol at high pressures

We present the high pressure (up to 3 GPa) dielectric spectroscopy study of ethanol in supercooled liquid and solid states. It was found that ethanol can be obtained in the glassy form by relatively slow cooling in the pressure range below 1.5 GPa. Glassy dynamics of ethanol is dominated by hydrogen bonds which cause rise of fragility index with pressure rising and relatively slow increase of glassification temperature. The termination of ethanol galssification at 1.5 GPa is related to the phase transition of ethanol in this pressure range to the disordered crystal structure which allows easy crystallization of ethanol at high pressures. Dielectric spectroscopy of solid phases of ethanol reveals the presence of molecular motion in both of them in the temperature range close to the melting curve but demonstrates different molecular dynamics in the two solid phases of ethanol.

A design of backing seat and gasket assembly in diamond anvil cell for accurate single crystal x-ray diffraction to 5 GPa

We designed a new cell assembly of diamond anvil cells for single crystal x-ray diffraction under pressure and demonstrate the application of the cell to the crystallographic studies for ice VI and ethanol high-pressure (HP) phase at 0.95(5) GPa and 1.95(2) GPa, respectively. The features of the assembly are: (1) the platy anvil and unique-shaped backing seat (called as "Wing seat") allowing the extremely wide opening angle up to ±65°, (2) the PFA-bulk metallic glass composite gasket allowing the easy attenuation correction and less background. Thanks to the designed assembly, the R(int) values after attenuation corrections are fairly good (0.0125 and 0.0460 for ice VI and ethanol HP phase, respectively), and the errors of the refined parameters are satisfactory small even for hydrogen positions, those are comparable to the results which obtained at ambient conditions. The result for ice VI is in excellent agreement with the previous study, and that for ethanol HP phase has remarkable contributions to the revision to its structure; the H12 site, which makes gauche molecules with O1, C2, and C3 sites, may not exist so that only trans conformers are present at least at 1.95(2) GPa. The accurate intensities using the cell assembly allow us to extract the electron density for ethanol HP phase by the maximum entropy method.

Variable temperature (100—295 K) single-crystal X-ray diffraction study of the α-polymorph of glycylglycine and a glycylglycine hydrate

The crystal structures of theα-polymorph of glycylglycine (glygly) and of its hydrate (glygly × 1.5 H2O) were refined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction at 100, 150, 220, and 295 K (glygly) and at 100, 200, 295 K (glygly × 1.5 H2O). The values of the volume thermal expansions of glygly and its hydrate were shown to be larger than for the three polymorphs of glycine. The anisotropy of strain on cooling was analyzed. Despite a smaller bulk thermal expansion measured for glygly, linear strain (both compression and expansion) along the axes of the strain ellipsoids was larger for the structure of glygly, than for the structure of glygly × 1.5 H2O. The contributions of the distortion of the intermolecular hydrogen bonds and of the conformational changes of the zwitter-ions to the lattice strain are considered.

High pressure induced spin changes and magneto-structural correlations in hexametallic SMMs

The first combined high pressure single-crystal X-ray diffraction and high pressure magnetism study of two polymetallic clusters is presented in an attempt to correlate the observed changes in structure with changes in magnetic response without the need for changes in external ligation. At 1.5 GPa the structure of [Mn(6)O(2)(Et-sao)(6)(O(2)CPh(Me)(2))(2)(EtOH)(6)] (1; Et-saoH(2) = 2-hydroxyphenylpropanone)--a single molecule magnet (SMM) with an effective anisotropy barrier of approximately 86 K--and of [Mn(6)O(2)(Et-sao)(6)(O(2)C-naphth)(2)(EtOH)(4)(H(2)O)(2)] 2 both undergo significant structural distortions of their metallic skeletons, which has a direct effect upon the observed magnetic response. The application of hydrostatic pressure on the two compounds (up to 1.5 GPa) flattens the Mn-N-O-Mn torsion angles weakening the magnetic exchange between the metal centres. In both compounds one interaction switches from ferro- to antiferromagnetic, with the Jahn-Teller (JT) axes compressing (on average) and re-aligning differently with respect to the plane of the three metal centres. High pressure dc chi(M)T plots display a gradual decrease in the low temperature peak height and slope, simulations showing a decrease in |J| with increasing pressure with a second antiferromagnetic J value required to simulate the data. The "ground states" change from S = 12 to S = 11 for 1 and to S = 10 for 2. Magnetisation data for both 1 and 2 suggest a small decrease in |D|, while out-of-phase (chi(M)(//)) ac data show a large decrease in the effective energy barrier for magnetisation reversal.

High-pressure structural study of L-α-glutamine and the use of Hirshfeld surfaces and graph-set notation to investigate the hydrogen bonding present in the structure up to 4.9 GPa

The crystal structure of L-α-glutamine has been elucidated at room temperature at pressures between 0 and 4.9 GPa by using single-crystal high-pressure X-ray diffraction techniques. The structure is primarily stabilized by five N—H...O intermolecular interactions, which link molecules in a herringbone-like layer arrangement, giving rise to voids within the solid. The application of pressure on the structure results in a reduction in the size of the voids, as a consequence of the shortening of the N—H...O hydrogen bonds, which compress to minimum N...O distances of around 2.6 Å, without driving the crystal structure to a phase transition. The decrease in the hydrogen-bond distances is due to the necessary stabilization of the structure, which arises from molecules modifying their positions to optimize electrostatic contacts and minimize the occupied space. Hirshfeld surfaces and fingerprint plots have been used to rapidly assess the structural changes that occur on application of pressure.

High-pressure diffraction studies of molecular organic solids. A personal view

This paper discusses the trends in the experimental studies of molecular organic solids at high pressures by diffraction techniques. Crystallization of liquids, crystallization from solutions and solid-state transformations are considered. Special attention is paid to the high-pressure studies of pharmaceuticals and of biomimetics.