Molecular-Level Understanding of Structural Changes of Organic Crystals Induced by Macroscopic Mechanical Stimulation

Structural changes to molecular crystals upon mechanical stimulation have attracted attention for sensing, recording, and microactuation. Comprehensive structure information is required to understand relationships between the mechanical force applied, the crystal structure, and the bulk property changes in order to develop general design concepts for mechanoresponsive compounds. Unfortunately, mechanical stimulation of organic crystals typically deteriorates their integrity, preventing detailed structure analyses by single-crystal X-ray diffraction (XRD) methods. However, in the past three years, several interesting studies have been reported in which molecular crystals retain their integrity even after a mechanically induced crystalline structure change. These materials have allowed us to investigate how macroscopic mechanical forces affect the microscopic structures of molecular crystals by single-crystal XRD analyses. This Minireview summarizes current knowledge of mechanically induced structure changes in molecular crystals, which will facilitate research in this field.