Bill Ojala
Solid State Organic Chemistry and X-ray Crystallography
Recent Research
Bridge-Flipped Isomers: Our designation for pairs of chemically different molecules with the same numbers and kinds of atoms (isomeric molecules) in which two major parts of the molecule are joined by a bridge of atoms, the exchange of atoms between positions in the bridge relating one isomer to the other.
benzylideneanilines
phenylhydrazones
Our goal is to co-crystallize pairs of these isomers to create new solid materials. We are therefore examining these compounds by single-crystal X-ray diffraction to find isostructural pairs (having the same solid-state molecular packing arrangement), which are most likely to co-crystallize readily. Few examples of isostructural pairs have been reported in the literature, but our work has now uncovered three thus far (shown below), essentially doubling the number of known, potentially co-crystallizable pairs.
We have found these to be the packing arrangements shared by…
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Crystal structures of selected compounds are determined through the assistance of the X-ray Crystallographic Laboratory (XCL) of the Department of Chemistry of the University of Minnesota. Data sets collected at the XCL are transmitted to the Structure Determination Laboratory of the University of St. Thomas Chemistry Department, where undergraduate research students have the opportunity to solve and refine the crystal structures by means of the SHELXTL software package. Students in the Structure Determination Laboratory are also granted access to the Cambridge Crystallographic Database in support of their research projects.
Dr. Ojala and his students gratefully acknowledge the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund for financial support of their work.
Ojala Group Presentations (Link)
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Please send me an email if you are interested in joining with my group in this work.
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