Crystal Growth and Design, 2010. Cover article!

I am really proud to reveal one of my latest accomplishments. This is a huge article (sort of review) covering the whole family of compounds from the crystallography point of view. And it made a cover of the current issue of this journal!

Filatov, A. S.; Scott, L. T.; Petrukhina, M. A. "“Pi-Pi Interactions and Solid State Packing Trends of Polycyclic Aromatic Bowls in the Indenocorannulene Family: A New Class of Organic Materials with Potentially Useful Bulk Electronic Properties”" Cryst. Growth Des. 2010, 10, 4607–4621.

In the article we presented the first systematic crystallographic study of the whole family of nonplanar polyaromatic hydrocarbons having a stepwise increase in surface area, curvature, and strain. The effect of controlled extension of π-aromatic surfaces on the solid state structures of the resulting crystalline solids and their implications for molecular electronics were discussed. (ACS copyright.)

Farm PMMA

I grew up on a farm so I could not pass the topic. There is one mistake on the picture, can you find it?

Well, I didn't count piglets correctly :) There are 9 "attached" to their mother and there is one hardly seen beneath one of the bolder friends. I used "only" 8 methyl methacrylate residues attached to "mother", but should be 9.

Dancing with the Stars

Well, I guess there is no need to say much, just waltz me please ;)

"Real" occupied molecular orbital in hypothetical molecule of Bi2(formate)4.

Organometallics, 2010

Reference: A. S. Filatov, A. Yu. Rogachev, E. A. Jackson, L. T. Scott, M. A. Petrukhina "Increasing the Curvature of a Bowl-Shaped Polyarene by Fullerene-like h2-Complexation of a Transition Metal at the Interior of the Convex Surface" Organometallics 2010, 29, 1231-1239. (ACS copyright.)

This is a TOC graphic for the article.

I think this is a good example how some small artistic touch can help in understanding the chemistry beyond the figure. I needed to show that Rh metal is coordinated to the interior surface of the nonplanar hydrocarbon. In a side view, it was hard to see and could be mistaken with the rim coordination. I made a rim on the back of the molecule slightly less contrast and more blended into the background, so it is much more obvious where Rh is attached to now.

Inorganic Chemistry, 2010

Reference: A. S. Filatov, O. Hietsoi, Yu. Sevryugina, N. N. Gerasimchuk, M. A. Petrukhina "Reversible Cu4 to Cu6 Core Interconversion and Temperature Induced Single-Crystal-to-Single-Crystal Phase Transition of Copper(I) Carboxylate" Inorg. Chem. 2010, 49, 1626-1633. (ACS copyright.)

Well, there is no much art here, but I'm continuing my tradition to upload TOC graphics for the articles prepared by me.

Angewandte Chemistry, 2009

Well, before publication of the Angew article (I'm going to talk about in the very next topic), I was invited to communicate results of that work at the symposium devoted to bowl-shaped molecules at the 236th ACS National Meeting in Philadelphia (August 18, 2008). While working on the presentation I was doing some calculations, and when I saw some orbitals for mono-indenocorannulene I could not help but draw faces over the orbitals. Here they are:

Thanks goes to Alex Sikirzhitski for helping me out with these guys.

Angewandte Chemistry, 2009

One of the articles I'm especially proud of!
Reference: A. S. Filatov, E. A. Jackson, L. T. Scott, M. A. Petrukhina "Foregoing Rigidity to Achieve Greater Intimacy" Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2009, 48, 8473-8476. (Wiley copyright.)

Here is the TOC graphic which was published. I coined the term "curvature exchange or curvature adaptations" and it seems worked fine.


Here is another variant of TOC, which was obviously not published but may be better shows the point of the article:


This figure is actually taken form the communication. It shows how planar mercury complex is getting curved upon coordination to the non-planar surface of mono-indenocorannulene.