The Electron Diffractometer: a new instrument for crystal structure analysis

Every crystallographer knows: Crystallization is a tricky thing. Obtaining crystals large enough for X-ray diffraction experiments is not that easy. Such a task may require days, weeks, months or even years of efforts. In many cases, it is even impossible. This is why crystal growth is seen as the major bottleneck in many fields of industrial and academic solid-state research, which relies on X-ray diffraction experiments for the structure determination of its compounds.

Now another approach is on the rise: electron diffraction, which is gaining incredible momentum. During the past two years, every relevant congress or conference dedicated to crystallography, chemistry, material sciences, geology, structural biology and many other areas has featured sessions, keynotes and lectures that address the topic of electron diffraction. The number of scientific publications and crystal structures produced using this technique is also increasing rapidly.

Electron diffraction: A very promising technique becoming widely available

The reason is simple: Present diffraction methods are only applicable to samples of sub-millimeter sizes. Electron diffraction overcomes this limitation and allows investigations on nano-crystalline systems down to 1 million times smaller in volume. For example, in drug discovery alone, hundreds of thousands of known but not fully characterized crystalline compounds could be rapidly screened for their scientific or commercial potential. This also applies to many other fields, such as MOFs, zeolites, minerals, and natural products. Big pharma companies could expect to save up to six months in development of a single drug candidate if crystallization was not an issue anymore.

With the dedicated Electron Diffractometer from ELDICO Scientific, crystallization problems can be easily overcome.  

On nano-crystallography

With Dr. Mauro Gemmi, Director at the Center for Nanotechnology Innovation@NEST