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ABOUT
US
The
UCSD Crystallography Facility was established by the Division
of Physical Sciences, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
to accommodate the local demand for analytical crystallography and to
provide high-precision, small-molecule structure determinations for
organic and inorganic compounds for industry, academic and government
laboratories. The laboratory also conducts inter-disciplinary
research and teaches crystallography to students, faculty and industry
researchers.
Directed
by Dr. Arnold L. Rheingold, the facility
has both expertise with structure analysis of organic and inorganic
compounds and the state-of-the-art instrumentation to handle all aspects
of crystal structure analysis from data collection to structure solution
and refinement and presentation.
Why Crystallography?
Chemical
crystallography is the determination of solid-state structure by an X-ray
diffraction experiment on a single crystal. A crystal oriented in a
particular diffracting position, by a four-axis robotic instrument known
as a diffractometer.
Function
follows structure. For instance, the knowledge of accurate
molecular structures is a prerequisite for rational drug design and for
structure-based functional studies to aid the development of effective
therapeutic agents and drugs. Crystallography can reliably provide the
answer to many structure related questions, from
details of intramolecular bonding to an
examination of lattice construction.
In
contrast to more indirect spectroscopic method such as NMR, no size
limitation exists for the molecule or complex to be studied. With NMR
techniques compounds must be soluble.
X-ray Crystallography Advances
Recent
advances in the instrumentation for small-molecule X-ray crystallography
have made it possible to complete a full structural characterization of a
new material in a few hours, at low cost and with less ambiguity than any
other structured characterizational method
currently available.
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