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Title: Powder diffraction and crystal structure prediction identify four new coumarin polymorphs

Journal Article · · Chemical Science
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1039/c7sc00168a· OSTI ID:1426142
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [5];  [4];  [4];  [6];  [6]; ORCiD logo [5]; ORCiD logo [7]; ORCiD logo [3];  [8]; ORCiD logo [9]
  1. New York Univ. (NYU), NY (United States). Department of Chemistry, Molecular Design Institute
  2. Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV (United States). Department of Physics and Astronomy, High Pressure Science and Engineering Center; Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States). Department of Geosciences
  3. Curtin University, Perth (Australia). Curtin Institute for Computation and Department of Chemistry
  4. New York Univ. (NYU), NY (United States). Department of Chemistry
  5. Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin (Germany); University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg). Physics and Materials Science Research Unit
  6. Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa (Israel). Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute
  7. Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Skolkovo Innovation Center, Moscow (Russia); Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States). Department of Geosciences
  8. New York Univ. (NYU), NY (United States). Department of Chemistry and Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences; New York University-East China Normal University Center for Computational Chemistry at NYU Shanghai (China)
  9. New York Univ. (NYU), NY (United States). Department of Chemistry, Molecular Design Institute; Waseda Univ., Shinjuku (Japan). Department of Advanced Science and Engineering (TWIns)

Coumarin, a simple, commodity chemical isolated from beans in 1820, has, to date, only yielded one solid state structure. Here, we report a rich polymorphism of coumarin grown from the melt. Four new metastable forms were identified and their crystal structures were solved using a combination of computational crystal structure prediction algorithms and X-ray powder diffraction. With five crystal structures, coumarin has become one of the few rigid molecules showing extensive polymorphism at ambient conditions. We demonstrate the crucial role of advanced electronic structure calculations including many-body dispersion effects for accurate ranking of the stability of coumarin polymorphs and the need to account for anharmonic vibrational contributions to their free energy. As such, coumarin is a model system for studying weak intermolecular interactions, crystallization mechanisms, and kinetic effects.

Research Organization:
Board of Regents Nevada System of Higher Education, Las Vegas, NV (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Grant/Contract Number:
NA0001982; AC02-98CH10086
OSTI ID:
1426142
Journal Information:
Chemical Science, Vol. 8, Issue 7; ISSN 2041-6520
Publisher:
Royal Society of ChemistryCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 82 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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