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Updated: Mar 28, 2026

Novel Techniques for Observing Structural Dynamics of Photoresponsive Liquid Crystals
Published on: May 29, 2018
Dynamic single crystal to polycrystal transformation of a 1D-coordination polymer and its second harmonic generation
Massimo Cametti1, Ilaria Bargigia2, Javier Martí-Rujas2
1Dipartimento di Chimica Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica "Giulio Natta", Politecnico di Milano, Via L. Mancinelli 7, 20131 Milan, Italy. massimo.cametti@polimi.it.
Abstract:
Upon guest CHCl3 release, the one-dimensional (1D) coordination polymer ·CHCl3 gives rise to a non-porous structure, , following a unit cell volume reduction of ca. 22%. Due to the considerable structural transformation, the single crystal does not maintain its integrity, and therefore the structure determination has been carried out by combining single crystal X-ray diffraction and ab initio X-ray powder diffraction analyses. The result shows a symmetry breaking transformation leading to an acentric crystalline material (), which shows nonlinear optical properties such as second harmonic generation.
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