Chemical Crystallography

The Chemical Crystallography Group and X-ray Crystallography Facility are located in the Chemistry Research Laboratory. The facility contains state of the art crystallographic diffraction equipment, laboratory space for sample preparation, office space for computational and theoretical work.

Research topics:

• Determining best procedures for diffraction experiments and analyses.
• Evaluation of numerical techniques for the optimisation of structure analysis software.
• Pattern recognition for the identification of molecular fragments in challenging structures.
• Analysis of packing of crystal structures of series of related materials.
• Testing and formalisation of rules-of-thumb, e.g. for hydrogen atom positioning.
• Design of validation criteria for independent assessment of the correctness of a structure.

Current group members:

Richard Cooper, Head of Chemical Crystallography;
Amber Thompson, Chemical Crystallography Service Mananger;

Karim Sutton, DPhil Student;
N David Brown, DPhil Student;
David Watkin, Retired Head of Chemical Crystallography;
Terry Willis, Emeritus Professor;
Keith Waters, Instrument support;
Kirsten Christensen, Academic Visitor;
Mustapha Sadki, Academic Visitor;
Shahzad Sharif, Visiting Student;
David Edgeley, Part II Student;
Nia Wycherley, Part II Student;