Mitigation of the global energy crisis requires tailoring the thermal conductivity of materials. Low thermal conductivity is critical in a broad range of energy conversion technologies, including thermoelectrics and thermal barrier coatings. Here, we review the chemical trends and explore the origins of low thermal conductivity in crystalline materials. A unifying feature in the latest material...

Crystal engineering, the design of molecular solids, is the synthesis of functional solid-state structures from neutral or ionic building blocks, using intermolecular interactions in the design strategy. Hydrogen bonds, coordination bonds, and other less directed interactions define substructural patterns, referred to in the literature as supramolecular synthons and secondary building units. Cr...

Today, there is very little doubt that chemistry owes as much to crystallography as crystallography does to chemistry. This mutual synergy defines modern chemical crystallography.

The structural features of a molecule are determined by the covalent bonds within the molecule. Modification of the structure requires the breaking and creation of covalent bonds. Similarly, the intrinsic reactivity of a molecule arises from the covalently bonded functional groups and active sites on a molecule. Again, changing the properties requires modifications of the covalent bonds. Even i...

Surface smoothness of ceramic glazes is always an important characteristic of ceramic glazes as a point of surface engineering studies. Surface roughness affects chemical resistivity, glossiness and stainabiliy of glazes. In fact, less surface roughness improves cleanability of the surface by the least usage amount of detergents. In this investigation, surface topography of two common opaque gl...