u/jus1m3

I’m looking for someone with expertise in advanced crystallographic characterization who might be interested in taking a closer look at a porous metal phosphonate sample.

The material forms needle-shaped crystals of up to about 10 µm length and roughly 100 nm width. These needles are often intergrown and frequently consist of multiple fused crystals, which has made conventional single-crystal analysis difficult.

Electron diffraction has already been attempted by another group. Unfortunately, the diffraction quality was poor, so a full structure solution was not possible. However, the unit cell parameters could be determined with relative confidence.

I’m therefore looking for advice, collaboration, or access to suitable methods, for example:

- electron diffraction

- serial crystallography

- microfocus or synchrotron-based approaches

- other crystallographic methods that could be suitable for very small, intergrown crystals

The goal is to obtain reliable structural information for this porous phosphonate despite the challenging crystal morphology.

If you work with these methods yourself, know a group that does, or have suggestions on the most promising approach, I’d be very happy to hear from you.

Thanks a lot!