Rapid Structure Determination of Microcrystalline Molecular Compounds Using Electron Diffraction

Chemists of all fields currently publish about 50000 crystal structures per year, the vast majority of which are X-ray structures. We determined two molecular structures by employing electron rather than X-ray diffraction. For this purpose, an EIGER hybrid pixel detector was fitted to a transmission electron microscope, yielding an electron diffractometer. The structure of a new methylene blue derivative was determined at 0.9 angstrom resolution from a crystal smaller than 1 x 2 mu m(2). Several thousand active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are only available as submicrocrystalline powders. To illustrate the potential of electron crystallography for the pharmaceutical industry, we also determined the structure of an API from its pill. We demonstrate that electron crystallography complements X-ray crystallography and is the technique of choice for all unsolved cases in which submicrometer-sized crystals were the limiting factor.