The true structural periodicities and superspace group descriptions of the prototypical incommensurate composite materials: Alkane/urea inclusion compounds

Couzi, Michel, Guillaume, François, Harris, Kenneth David Maclean ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7855-8598, Palmer, Benjamin A., Christensen, Kirsten and Collins, Stephen P. 2016. The true structural periodicities and superspace group descriptions of the prototypical incommensurate composite materials: Alkane/urea inclusion compounds. Europhysics Letters 116 (5) , 56001. 10.1209/0295-5075/116/56001

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Abstract

The prototypical family of incommensurate composite materials are the n-alkane/urea inclusion compounds, in which n-alkane guest molecules are arranged in a periodic manner along one-dimensional tunnels in a urea host structure, with an incommensurate relationship between the periodicities of the host and guest substructures along the tunnel. We develop interpretations of the structural periodicities, superspace group descriptions and symmetry properties of the low-temperature phases of n-alkane/urea inclusion compounds, based in part on a high-resolution synchrotron single-crystal X-ray diffraction study of n-nonadecane/urea. Specifically, we prove that, on passing from phase I to phase II, the C-centering of the orthohexagonal unit cell is lost for both the host and guest substructures, and that the symmetries of all phases I, II and III are described completely by (3 + 1)-dimensional superspace groups.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Chemistry
Subjects:	Q Science > QD Chemistry
Publisher:	IOP Publishing
ISSN:	0295-5075
Funders:	EPSRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	8 February 2017
Date of Acceptance:	9 December 2016
Last Modified:	06 May 2023 03:23
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/97455

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