Toward Stereochemical Control, Monitoring, and Understanding of Crystal Nucleation

Abstract

In this review, the delicate interplay between stereochemical control, monitoring at the subnanometer level, and an understanding of crystal nucleation is probed. Control of crystal nucleation may be achieved employing tailor-made auxiliaries, which are either nucleation inhibitors or promoters. The process may be monitored at an interface via grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD). By these means, we can glean experimental knowledge of crystal nucleation in various molecular systems. A hypothesis was invoked that supersaturated solutions containing molecular clusters adopt various arrangements and shapes, some of which resemble the crystals into which they develop. This hypothesis was taken advantage of for the design of tailored inhibitors in achieving kinetic resolution of enantiomers and induced precipitation of particular crystal polymorphs. The control and behavior of polymorphic crystallization may be understood at the molecular level through the interplay between inhibitor, solvent, solute, cr...