"In recent times various intriguing dynamic single crystals that respond to external stimuli such as mechanical stress, heat, light, solvent, humidity, have been reported, but their systematic design remains a challenge. In my talk, I shall discuss the possible molecular level deformation mechanisms involved in organic single crystals and further, demonstrate a crystal engineering approach to design mechanically reconfigurable, plastically flexible single crystals of various compounds, i.e. by introducing active slip planes in structures via different non-interfering supramolecular weak interactions, namely van der Waals (vdW), π-stacking and hydrogen bonding groups [1, 2]. Soft interactions have a great potential for tuning mechanical behaviour of ordered functional molecular materials."
References:
[1] Panda, M. K., Ghosh, S., Yasuda, N., Moriwaki, T., Mukherjee, G. D., Reddy, C. M., Naumov, P. Nature Chem. 2015, 7, 65-72
[2] Krishna, G. R., Devarapalli, R., Lal, G. Reddy, C. M., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2016, 138, 13561−13567
