Center for Materials Interfaces, Electron Crystallography, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Pontedera.
Wiley Interdiscip Rev Nanomed Nanobiotechnol. 2022 Sep;14(5):e1810. doi: 10.1002/wnan.1810. Epub 2022 May 20.
Nanomedicine is among the most fascinating areas of research. Most of the newly discovered pharmaceutical polymorphs, as well as many new synthesized or isolated natural products, appear only in form of nanocrystals. The development of techniques that allow investigating the atomic structure of nanocrystalline materials is therefore one of the most important frontiers of crystallography. Some unique features of electrons, like their non-neutral charge and their strong interaction with matter, make this radiation suitable for imaging and detecting individual atoms, molecules, or nanoscale objects down to sub-angstrom resolution. In the recent years the development of three-dimensional (3D) electron diffraction (3D ED) has shown that electron diffraction can be successfully used to solve the crystal structure of nanocrystals and most of its limiting factors like dynamical scattering or limited completeness can be easily overcome. This article is a review of the state of the art of this method with a specific focus on how it can be applied to beam sensitive samples like small-molecule organic nanocrystals. This article is categorized under: Therapeutic Approaches and Drug Discovery > Emerging Technologies.
纳米医学是最引人入胜的研究领域之一。大多数新发现的药物多晶型物，以及许多新合成或分离的天然产物，仅以纳米晶体的形式出现。因此，开发能够研究纳米晶材料原子结构的技术是晶体学最重要的前沿领域之一。电子具有一些独特的特性，例如它们的非中性电荷和与物质的强烈相互作用，这使得这种辐射适合于成像和探测单个原子、分子或纳米级物体，分辨率达到亚埃以下。近年来，三维（3D）电子衍射（3D ED）的发展表明，电子衍射可以成功地用于解决纳米晶体的晶体结构，其大多数限制因素，如动力学散射或有限的完整性，都可以很容易地克服。本文综述了该方法的最新进展，特别关注如何将其应用于对束敏感的样品，如小分子有机纳米晶体。本文属于以下类别：治疗方法和药物发现 > 新兴技术。
