Tailor-made auxiliaries for the control of nucleation, growth and dissolution of two- and three-dimensional crystals

Abstract

Tailor-made molecular auxiliaries for the control of nucleation and growth of molecular crystals may be classified into two broad categories: inhibitors and promoters. Tailor-made inhibitors of crystal growth can be used for a variety of purposes which include morphological engineering, reduction of crystal symmetry, assignment of absolute structure of polar crystals, elucidation of the effect of solvent on crystal growth and crystallization of a desired polymorph. As for crystal growth promoters, Langmuir monolayers on water have been used to induce growth of 3D crystals at the monolayer-solution interface by means of structural match, molecular complementarity or an electrostatic interaction. The 2D crystalline structures of these monolayers have been studied by grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD). It has become possible to monitor, by GIXID, the growth and dissolution of self-aggregated crystalline monolayers affected by the interaction of solvent molecules in the aqueous subphase with the monolayer headgroups.