4th European conference for crystal growth – crystallisation in focus: from fundamentals to application

Crystallisation is a critical process in the isolation and purification of a huge range of important materials for many distinct applications that are vital to modern day life and to economic growth. It is therefore unsurprising that there are concerted efforts across a broad range of research groups to develop new understanding and technologies that can deliver increasingly precise control over the structural, chemical, optical, electronic and physical properties of interest in these areas.

The idea for this themed issue of CrystEngComm was developed during the preparation of the 4th European Conference for Crystal Growth (ECCG) held in Glasgow, UK in June 2012. This was the first ECCG meeting held since 1991, however, with the support of the International Organisation for Crystal Growth, the aim was to re-establish a stable and long lasting European conference as a forum for discussion between researchers from different disciplines involved in this challenging field. The conference chair and international advisory board chair, Prof Kevin Roberts, Leeds University, and Dr Rile Ristic, Sheffield University, developed a conference programme that reflected the breadth of crystallisation science and highlighted recent advances in the field with sessions dealing with nucleation, crystal growth under extreme conditions, bulk crystal growth, spontaneous resolution, process design for pharmaceutical crystallisation, crystallisation in external fields, epitaxial growth, mesocrystals and non-classical crystallisation, in situ monitoring and control, structural defects, growth of biological materials, biologically directed growth, nanocrystals and nanoporous growth, inhibition of crystallisation as well as novel materials and structures. With over 230 delegates from over 30 countries attending, the conference produced a vibrant meeting of European and international crystal growth research communities. This issue of CrystEngComm reports relevant advances from a wide cross-section of crystallisation science reported at ECCG-4 that underpins the growth of organic and inorganic materials from solution, melts and from the vapour phase. We hope that the journal readership finds this collection of research articles interesting and that the challenges highlighted help to encourage further development of approaches, ideas and insights for the advancement of crystallisation.

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