Synthon Modularity in 4-Hydroxybenzamide-Dicarboxylic Acid Cocrystals

A family of 4-hydroxybenzamide-dicarboxylic acid cocrystals has been designed and subsequently isolated and characterized. The design strategy follows from an understanding of synthon modularity in crystal structures of monocomponent crystals such as gamma-quinol, 4,4'-biphenol and 4-hydroxybenzoic acid. These monocomponent structures contain infinite O-H center dot center dot center dot O-H center dot center dot center dot O-H center dot center dot center dot cooperative synthons linked with molecular connectors such as phenyl and biphenyl, and supramolecular connectors such as the acid dimer in 4-hydroxybenzoic acid. The cocrystal design was influenced by the anticipation that dicarboxylic acids can form a supramolecular connector mediated by acid-amide synthons with 4-hydroxybenzamide, which can then form the phenol O-H center dot center dot center dot O-H center dot center dot center dot O-H center dot center dot center dot infinite synthon. Effectively, the acid-amide and phenol synthons are insulated. The short axis of such a structure will be around 5.12 angstrom and this is borne out in 2:1 cocrystals of 4-hydroxybenzamide with oxalic, succinic, fumaric, glutaric (two forms) and pimelic acids. Hydrated variations of this structure type are seen in the cocrystals obtained with adipic and sebacic acids.

Relationship between entropy and diffusion: A statistical mechanical derivation of Rosenfeld expression for a rugged energy landscape

Diffusion-a measure of dynamics, and entropy-a measure of disorder in the system are found to be intimately correlated in many systems, and the correlation is often strongly non-linear. We explore the origin of this complex dependence by studying diffusion of a point Brownian particle on a model potential energy surface characterized by ruggedness. If we assume that the ruggedness has a Gaussian distribution, then for this model, one can obtain the excess entropy exactly for any dimension. By using the expression for the mean first passage time, we present a statistical mechanical derivation of the well-known and well-tested scaling relation proposed by Rosenfeld between diffusion and excess entropy. In anticipation that Rosenfeld diffusion-entropy scaling (RDES) relation may continue to be valid in higher dimensions (where the mean first passage time approach is not available), we carry out an effective medium approximation (EMA) based analysis of the effective transition rate and hence of the effective diffusion coefficient. We show that the EMA expression can be used to derive the RDES scaling relation for any dimension higher than unity. However, RDES is shown to break down in the presence of spatial correlation among the energy landscape values. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.