From better health to improved lethality: Controlling crystallization of pharmaceuticals and explosives

Crystalline materials play a pivotal role in a broad range of technologies that are central to a modern society. Crystalline silicon enabled the computer revolution, for example, and studies of protein crystals have advanced our current understanding of human disease. I will discuss our work with the crystallization of small organic molecules with particular emphasis on how controlling crystallization can create better therapeutics and more powerful energetic materials. Much of the work hinges on the approach of manipulating multicomponent crystallization and several of the unique properties of crystallization relative to other synthetic techniques.
Adam Matzger