An overview of the development of electron diffraction and an introduction to the special issue Advances in Electron Diffraction for Structural Determination.

With an increasing number of refined MicroED structures available to the community, lessons can be learned of their profiles and quality, as well as of best practices.

The single-crystal structures of l-arginine and a trace impurity of racemic dl-arginine present in commercially sourced arginine have been determined using 3D ED. The single-crystal structure for l-arginine was previously unavailable.

The present study deals with the synthesis and properties of two Ru^II polypyridyl complexes containing 2,2′-bipyridine derivatives and one PF₆⁻ counter-ion. The investigation employs a combination of spectroscopic, X-ray diffraction and DFT computational methods to characterize the complexes.

A cobalt(II) compound, synthesized by reaction of Co(NO₃)₂·6H₂O with 5-nitrobenzene-1,3-dicarboxylic acid and 4,4′-bis(2-methyl-1H-imidazol-1-yl)-1,1′-biphenyl in a mixture of H₂O and dimethylformamide (DMF), exhibits a new three-dimensional threefold interpenetrated framework, which can be simplified to a dmp net. The title compound displays a highly selective and sensitive sensing for nitrofurazone (NFZ) in aqueous solution. In addition, the possible fluorescence quenching mechanisms toward NFZ are further investigated.

The title compound is a mononuclear cobalt(II) complex that demonstrates significant third-order nonlinear optical negative refraction properties.

Crystal structure determination and quantum chemical calculations have given a deeper insight into the structural features of 3-[5-(chlorobenzylidene)rhodanine]propionic acid derivatives, showing that the Z isomers are significantly more stable than the corresponding E isomers.

Large crystals have been grown of a new acidic salt, Rb(CH₃SO₃)(CH₃SO₃H), and have been investigated by single-crystal diffraction. The structure and optical properties are discussed.