We report results of a computational study on 2D crystallisation for a 25-particle Lennard-Jones system on a spherical surface, as a function of radius. The energy is minimised using simulated annealing and steepest descent methods. Different crystalline arrangements with clear energy minima are found at different radii. Qualitatively, most of the observed phenomena are representative also for ...

In the present study, use of a 3 wt% Fe2O3 catalyst improved crystallisation polysilazane PSN2. Crystallisation peaks higher intensity were observed for Si3N4 and SiC at 1250 °C by using than 1500 without Fe2O3. Besides, effects temperature on morphology samples determined through scanning electron microscopy. Porous structures these transformed to flaky near-spherical nanoparticles as temperat...

The solution behaviour in water of a polyoxazoline-type block copolymer, namely poly(2-isopropyl-2-oxazoline)-block-poly(2-methyl-2-oxazoline), denoted as P(iPrOx-b-MeOx), above the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of the PiPrOx block was exploited to induce a temporary or permanent self-assembly. Spherical micelles were first obtained and could be disassembled in a reversible manner ...

Crystals are particles structured with multiple faces that often have different surface chemistry and hence varied growth rates during crystallisation. It is possible to manipulate the growth of individual facets e.g. via the introduction of tailor-made additives which via changes in the molecular recognition for the different crystal habit faces effect a reduction in the growth rate of a speci...

Most protein crystallisation begins from heterogeneous nucleation; in practice, crystallisation typically occurs in the presence of a solid surface in the solution. The solid surface provides a nucleation site such that the energy barrier for nucleation is lower on the surface than in the bulk solution. Different types of solid surfaces exhibit different surface energies, and the nucleation bar...

X-ray crystallography is the most widely used technique for macromolecular structure determination. However, it requires the production of suitable crystals, an iterative and time-consuming process which remains unpredictable. Hence, the rational of the Crystallisation Facility at the Swiss Light Source at the Paul Scherrer Institut was to streamline the steps between intial crystallisation hit...

The availability of high-quality crystals is crucial to the structure determination of proteins by X-ray diffraction. With the advent of structural genomics the pressure to produce crystals is greater than ever before. Finding favourable conditions for crystallisation is usually achieved by screening of the protein solution with numerous crystallising agents. Optimisation of the crystallisation...

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), a class of microbial polyesters produced from fermentation, is of interest for scientists and environmentalists due to its wide-ranged combinations of monomers, biodegradability and biocompatibility properties. In this study, efforts were made to understand the kinetics of isothermal crystallisation of PHA containing 3 mol% of 3-hydroxyhexanoate (3HHx) co-monomer [P...

BACKGROUND Protein crystallisation screening involves the parallel testing of large numbers of candidate conditions with the aim of identifying conditions suitable as a starting point for the production of diffraction quality crystals. Generally, condition screening is performed in 96-well plates. While previous studies have examined the effects of protein construct, protein purity, or crystall...

A simple extension of existing models for protein crystallisation is described, in which salt ions and charge neutrality are explicitly incorporated. This provides a straightforward explanation for the shape of protein crystallisation boundaries, the associated scaling properties seen for lysozyme, and can also explain much of the salt dependence of the second virial coefficient. The analysis h...