Alloxan: Is it really a problem structure?

Abstract

For more than forty years the crystal structure of alloxan with its remarkable stability and unusually high melting point but its absence of “conventional” hydrogen bonds has been regarded as problematic. Now that intermolecular cohesive energies can be calculated with reasonable accuracy, the stability of the alloxan structure is seen to fit in well with that of other isostructural compounds. The problem can be regarded as solved or rather as non-existent.