Low temperature single crystal X-ray diffraction: advantages, instrumentation and applications

The benefits of carrying out single crystal X-ray diffraction (SXRD) experiments at low temperatures have long been recognised by the scientific community, as clearly demonstrated by the massive increase in publications reporting the use of low temperature SXRD in the past 15 years. This tutorial review will summarise the advantages, many of them now often forgotten by its practitioners or never known by the newcomers to the field, of performing single crystal X-ray diffraction experiments at low temperatures. The instrumentation currently available to university laboratories, which has been greatly improved over the past 5 years, will also be briefly described and a few different examples covering a range of applications will be presented.