Always enjoyable to visit I11 to get some gorgeous powder diffraction data, and even better when your friendly teammate volunteers to take care of all the capillary alignment.

What a week! Over 60 students from 30 countries came to @stockholm-uni.bsky.social to learn crystallography. The week was packed with science, but there was also time for a viking dinner, a barbecue and a Sweden quiz. Thanks to the participants and to everyone who agreed to teach and volunteer!

A massive thanks to the organisers involved in EPDIC for arranging such a lovely conference! I gave my first plenary (and had a great time doing so), Lara gave her first conference talk and Elina got her second poster prize. Now I just wish the trains would run as smoothly as the conference...

Certainly pays off to arrive a few days early to EPDIC when you make cute friends such as this one!

We are dipping our toes into the barocaloric waters (or solid?)! Very happy to share this preprint about the barocaloric effect in a spin crossover MOF. Matt did a great job of getting his head (and mine) around barocalorics with the help of @aephillips.bsky.social chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10....

I enjoyed giving a brief research talk at the WISE meeting earlier this week. Always interesting to see the very wide scope of sustainable materials science, and to interact with other researchers. Thanks to the organisers for the vibrant meeting!

Registration for the 11th ECA crystallography school is now open! It will be held in Stockholm on the 28th of June to the 4th of July and will give practical experience of solving and refining data from both powder, single crystal and electron diffraction. www.ecs11.org forms.gle/ckyFQoNqRd7d...

Winter weather at last!

Nobel Day is here! The work on Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025. Research on MOFs has been going on at Stockholm University for twenty years. Read more about our basic research on MOFs aiming for future solutions. #NobelPrize www.su.se/english/news...

Really enjoying the Nobel lectures this year! Such a privilege to hear first-hand how it all started.

Beautiful and aperiodic (I think?) wall tiling at Stavanger concert hall @braggyourpattern.bsky.social

Come to this/send people you know to it! We are doing what we can to make it educational and fun 😊

Ken Inge@keninge.bsky.social · 10mo ago

SAVE THE DATE! The 11th European Crystallography School (ECS11) takes place June 28–July 4, 2026, in Stockholm, Sweden. Topics: single-crystal X-ray diffraction, powder X-ray diffraction & 3D electron diffraction. Learn from leading experts through lectures and hands-on workshops! www.ecs11.org

Chocolate spectroscopy! To demonstrate spectroscopy to my first-year chemistry class, especially transmittance, I passed around a bag with three types of chocolate bars during the lecture. The students were allowed to take one piece each.

Had the fantastic opportunity to demonstrate MOF synthesis for the Swedish news program Aktuellt on SVT! www.svtplay.se/video/8myQL5...

So extremely much fun to have Andrew Goodwin visiting Stockholm for the day!

Come on, perovskite! Fierce competition here

Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 11mo ago

#MinCup25 Quarterfinal 2: It's #perovskite and its intriguing structure against #tugtupite's collection of optical tricks for this quarterfinal match! Vote: www.mineralcup.org/2025/vote/r3... Results: www.mineralcup.org/2025/results...

#MinCup25 Quarterfinal 2: It's #perovskite and its intriguing structure against #tugtupite's collection of optical tricks for this quarterfinal match! Vote: www.mineralcup.org/2025/vote/r3... Results: www.mineralcup.org/2025/results...

Vote in Quarterfinal 2 — Mineral Cup

Click here to vote in Perovskite vs Tugtupite Photo credit: Domenico Preite and Géry Parent

mineralcup.org

How can you be a solid-state chemist and vote anything but #perovskite ?

Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 11mo ago

#MinCup25 Round 2 Match 2: It's all about how minerals interact with humans as dramatic #stibnite faces off against futuristic #perovskite. Vote: www.mineralcup.org/2025/vote/r2... Results: www.mineralcup.org/2025/results...

I went away a week to ECM and while I wasn't looking, the group decided to double in size! We now welcome new PhD students Nida and Qingqing and master student Katerina. During the autumn, we are also happy to host the internship students Simon and Mathias.

Refinements are always beautiful (well, almost), but this mixed NTE/PTE* sample probably gives the most appealing set of diffraction that I have ever come across! 🔥 ❄️ *Positive thermal expansion in one direction; negative thermal expansion in the other two

Capillary alignment doesn't always work as planned...

Paper alert! 🌊 🔥 💎 💡 🚿 🧲 ⚡ Arkadiy Simonov, Yevheniia Kholina and I have reviewed (briefly) the stimuli-responsive behaviour of Prussian blue analogues, and you can now read about it in @jmaterchem.rsc.org ☺️ www.doi.org/10.1039/D5TC...

Had a great time at #MC17 organised by @rsc.org! Fun to catch up with friends and colleages, see the wonderful posters and talk, and present our work in progress. I always enjoy returning to 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and of course, no Edinburgh visit is complete without a climb up Arthur's seat!

Chemistry at Stockholm are looking for a computational colleague with a view towards sustainability. Tenure-track position with a really good start-up package (I know, because I am on the same scheme)! su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Assistant professor in Materials Chemistry with focus on Computational Materials Design

Stockholm University invites applications for an assistant professorship and an associate professorship, WISE fellows, within the framework of the Wallenberg Initiative Material Science for Sustainabi

su.varbi.com

I've done plenty of variable-pressure diffraction and (possibly) even more under variable temperature. But this weekend, I got to experience the joys of doing them both at the same time at Diamond. 💎 Please admire our (not entirely random) walk through the PT space...

Glad to see this study out! www.doi.org/10.1039/D5DT01192B It is a metastudy of spin crossover in Hofmann complexes, as well as symmetry-mode analysis in ISODISTORT. Also lots of firsts here: my first last-author paper, first group publication, and first paper on these compounds.

Though I would generally describe myself as a crystallographer, adding some spectroscopy every so often can be a lot of fun!

There is a new world record for negative area compressibility! A very nice and thorough study, which I had the pleasure of being a small part of 😊 doi.org/10.1021/jacs...

Colossal Negative Area Compressibility in the Ferroelastic Framework Cu(tcm)

Copper(I) tricyanomethanide, Cu(tcm), is a flexible framework material that exhibits the strongest negative area compressibility (NAC) effect ever observed─a remarkable property with potential applications in pressure sensors, artificial muscles, and shock-absorbing devices. Under increasing pressure, Cu(tcm) undergoes two sequential phase transitions (tetragonal → orthorhombic → monoclinic): It has an initial tetragonal structure (I41md) at ambient conditions, but this structure only persists within a narrow pressure range; at 0.12(3) GPa, a pressure-induced ferroelastic phase transition occurs, transforming Cu(tcm) into a low-symmetry orthorhombic structure (Fdd2). The orthorhombic phase has a NAC of −108(14) TPa–1 in the b–c plane between 0.12(3) and 0.93(8) GPa. The NAC behavior is associated with framework hinge motion in a flexible framework with “wine-rack” topology. At 0.93(8) GPa, Cu(tcm) undergoes a second phase transition and transforms into a layered monoclinic structure (Cc) with topologically interpenetrating honeycomb networks. The monoclinic phase of Cu(tcm) exhibits a slight negative linear compressibility (NLC) of −1.1(1) TPa–1 along the a axis and a zero area compressibility of Kac = Ka + Kc = 0.0(4) TPa–1 in the a–c plane over the pressure range of 0.93–2.63 GPa. In contrast to the orthorhombic phase, its mechanism is understood as the pressure-driven dampening of layer “rippling,” which acts to increase the cross-sectional area of the layer at higher hydrostatic pressures. These findings have implications for understanding the underlying mechanism of NAC phenomenon in framework materials.

doi.org

Campus tulips are out! And of course worth pointing out that they are planted in a Frieze pattern🌷

Happy frog🐸