SIG4 (ECA) Distinguished Publication Award 2024

The “Distinguished Publication Award 2024”, presented by the Special Interest Group on Electron Crystallography of the European Crystallographic Association (ECA SIG4), recognizes the most outstanding paper published in 2023. This award celebrates significant advancements and applications in the field of electron crystallography. Candidate publications were evaluated based on several criteria, including innovation, complexity, high-quality research with a focus on electron crystallography, broad scope, and impact on the community. The jury was made up of internationally renowned experts in electron crystallography. SIG4 extends its thanks to them for their engagement and professionalism.

This year’s winner is the paper titled “Accurate structural models and absolute configuration determination using dynamical effects in continuous-rotation 3D electron diffraction data” by Paul B. Klar, Yaşar Krysiak, Hongyi Xu, Gwladys Steciuk, Jung Cho, Xiaodong Zou, and Lukas Palatinus, published on April 20, 2023, in Nature Chemistry, 15, 848−855 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-023-01186-1).

Klar et al. describe a method for analysing continuous-rotation 3D electron diffraction (3D ED) data for routine structure analysis across a broad range of materials, including minerals, framework structures, and organic compounds. The paper introduces the concept of 'virtual frames' to calculate integrated intensities using the dynamical theory of diffraction. This approach is then applied to the dynamical refinement of crystal structure models using 3D ED data from 19 different compounds. The authors demonstrate that this refinement approach, which accounts for the multiple scattering of electrons, is clearly superior to the commonly used kinematical refinement, which neglects multiple scattering. Along with reducing noise in Fourier maps and improving overall agreement between measured and calculated intensities, dynamical refinement reveals structural details more clearly, such as hydrogen sites and guest molecules. A key focus of the paper is the determination of the absolute structure of chiral compounds, demonstrated by successfully assigning the correct handedness based on 3D ED data from 58 chiral molecular crystals.

The jury was particularly impressed by the wide-reaching impact of the work, as the results were based on data from 10 different transmission electron microscopes across various laboratories. This impact is further underscored by the paper’s nearly 50 citations as of September 2024.

We congratulate the winners and look forward to future developments in the field of electron crystallography.

Gwladys Steciuk (left) and Paul Klar (right) at ECM34, Padua, Italy, August 2024.