Comments on recently published papers reporting on "new" amino acid-based crystals in the Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics

Abstract

In this comment, we review six recently published papers in the Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics, reporting on the growth of "new" amino acid-based crystals viz. "L-methionine potassium hydrogen phthalate" (1), "L-methionine barium nitrate" (2), "L-asparagine monohydrate potassium dichromate" (3), "L-asparagine monohydrate lithium sulphate" (4), "L-phenylalanine lithium sulphate" (5) and "L-cysteine hydrochloride monohydrate lithium sulphate" (6). All these so-called novel crystals (1)-(6) were characterized based on unit cell data. A critical analysis of the experimental results in these publications reveal that (1) is potassium hydrogen phthalate C sub(8)H sub(5)O sub(4)K, (2) is barium nitrate Ba(NO sub(3))2, (3) and (4) are L-asparagine monohydrate L-C sub(4)H sub(8)N sub(2)O sub(3).H sub(2)O and (5) and (6) are lithium sulphate monohydrate Li sub(2_SO sub(4).H sub(2)O, respectively, based on unit cell parameters. Taking (1)-(6) as examples we highlight the importance of single crystal X-ray structure determination for unambiguous characterization of new materials and suggest reporting chemical formula in the abstract of the publication.