The New York Times reported on March 4 that Juan Manuel García-Ruiz (Donostia International Physics Center, Spain), the most recent recipient of the ACA’s Elizabeth A. Wood Science Writing Award, has found that chimpanzees seem to be as fascinated by crystals as we are. Expect the chimpanzee / crystallographer jokes to start rolling in.
This month, we’re spotlighting the XtaLAB Synergy-ED. Fraser shares a report from the most recent Rigaku School for Practical Crystallography, and Christoph Feldt, Christian Schürmann, and Jürgen Gräßlin provide a recap of the DGK meeting in Lübeck.
In our Tip of the Month, Christian Schürmann walks through setting up custom run lists in CrysAlisPro, with practical guidance for positioning the goniometer precisely where you want it.
Be sure to visit Crystallography in the News for highlights from cutting-edge research. And in honor of International Women’s Day (March 8), I asked Jeanette to review Women in the History of Quantum Physics: Beyond Knabenphysik.
IUCr2026 early-bird registration closes on March 31, 2026. If you’re planning to attend IUCr2026 in Calgary from August 11–18, 2026, now is the time to lock in the discounted rate. With 144+ microsymposia, 20+ workshops, and a full week of world-class crystallography, IUCr2026 is shaping up to be a landmark meeting.
Our LinkedIn groupshares information and fosters discussion about X-ray crystallography and SAXS topics. Connect with other research groups and receive updates on how they use these techniques in their own laboratories. You can also catch up on the latest newsletter or Rigaku Journal issue. We also hope that you will share information about your own research and laboratory groups.
Atrigakuxrayforum.comyou can find discussions about software, general crystallography issues and more. It’s also the place to download the latest version of Rigaku Oxford Diffraction’sCrysAlisProsoftware for single crystal data processing.
The world around us is filled with crystals and crystalline materials. As a species, we’ve long held a fascination with crystals whether its diamonds for their beauty or silicon for its importance in computing. Crystallography is a topic rich with history, Nobel prizes and capability. This blog intends to explore the many aspects of crystallography from the logistical to the scientific to the educational.
Report on the Asia-Pacific Rigaku School for Practical Crystallography
By Fraser White
In February 2026, we concluded this year’s Rigaku School for Practical Crystallography, the first since 2024 and seventh overall online course, including the two advanced schools. The School (as I will call it) is delivered online via Zoom and this year was attended by more than 1,000 participants worldwide. With this latest instalment, registrations for our School have now exceeded 5,000 unique students covering 97 countries.
The School was originally created in response to the pandemic, when Paul Swepston saw the opportunity for us to put our zoom license to good use after noting that many established face-to-face crystallography schools were being cancelled. What began as a temporary alternative quickly revealed a broader need. The level of demand, and the feedback from participants expressing both gratitude and a lack of comparable training opportunities, made it clear that the programme was more than a stop-gap solution.
From the outset, Joe decided that the emphasis should be on the practical aspects. We are fortunate to have many talented applications scientists spending their days elbow-deep in the practical aspects of crystallography, so it just made sense to play to their strengths. The curriculum focuses on how to perform crystallographic experiments from selecting samples all the way to publishing the data that you collected and processed. We also tackle some of the commonly encountered problems—absolute structure determination and twinning—and, since it is increasingly becoming an essential tool, electron diffraction. As an incentive to pay attention, we offered an exam, tracked attendance and highlighted slides with potential exam content with a mortarboard icon.
The pandemic era necessity to conduct the school online has actually proven to be one of the School’s greatest post-pandemic strengths. Virtual delivery has allowed us to reach researchers in regions where access to crystallographic instrumentation and formal training is limited. Among the 97 countries we have reached there is strong representation across all continents. Most participants are newcomers to crystallography, many engaging in structured, application-focused instruction for the first time. What we initially viewed as a logistical solution has become a powerful mechanism for widening access and strengthening the global crystallographic community.
Another hugely surprising aspect of the School was the decision of some universities to offer course credit for participation in the course and passing its online exam. Upon learning this we immediately felt an increased weight of responsibility and increased our activity level with many hours of preparation meetings, rigorous content reviews and careful crafting of exam questions.
We hope that the School continues to be useful and look forward to holding future editions.
Report from the Annual Meeting of the German Crystallographic Society (DGK)
By Christoph Feldt, Christian Schürmann, and Jürgen Gräßlin
Rigaku proudly participated in the annual meeting of the German Crystallographic Society (DGK), held in the beautiful, historic Hanseatic city of Lübeck from March 10-13. In the spirit of the Hanseatic tradition of collaboration, exchange, and shared progress, the Rigaku teams from both the single crystal and powder diffraction divisions were on site to connect with scientists from around the world and to support this truly international gathering.
Our application specialist Emilia Buchsteiner presented the latest results on variable temperature diffraction and polymorph screening using the XtaLAB Synergy-ED. During the poster session, Christian Schürmann engaged with researchers and showcased the newest developments in Rigaku’s single crystal hardware.
Rigaku is proud to support this creative and enthusiastic community with our cutting-edge single crystal, powder and electron diffraction systems, enabling scientists to push the boundaries of research. In addition to the high quality of scientific discussions, our visitors also demonstrated impressive skill in the Japanese art of origami—a pleasant and informal way to spark technical conversations at our booth.
We would like to extend our sincere thanks to the organizers for an inspiring, informative, and enjoyable conference.
Origamis populating the Rigaku booth.
Live demonstration of the coordinate system within CrysAlisPro
Lübeck’s most famous attraction, the medieval city gate “Holstentor”
A system any X-ray crystallographer will find intuitive to operate
XtaLAB Synergy-ED is a new and fully integrated electron diffractometer, creating a seamless workflow from data collection to structure determination of three-dimensional molecular structures. The key feature of this product is that it provides researchers an integrated platform enabling easy access to electron crystallography. The XtaLAB Synergy-ED is a system any X-ray crystallographer will find intuitive to operate without having to become an expert in electron microscopy.
XtaLAB Synergy-ED Overview
The XtaLAB Synergy-ED is the result of an innovative collaboration between Rigaku and JEOL, to synergistically combine our core technologies: Rigaku’s high-speed, high-sensitivity photon-counting detector (HyPix-ED) and state-of-the-art instrument control and single crystal analysis software platform (CrysAlisPro for ED), and JEOL’s long-term expertise and market leadership in designing and producing transmission electron microscopes.
Solve the unsolvable
Simply put, MicroED, also known as 3D ED, offers the chance to solve 3D structures from samples that are too small for X-ray diffraction. For X-ray crystallography, these
samples would yield insufficient diffraction strength or quality to obtain a fully resolved structure.
When you are faced with a sample that is tricky to crystallize, MicroED can let you shortcut the difficult process of optimizing the crystallization conditions. Instead, the technique allows you to obtain 3D data and structure from powders, whether you have a lot or just a little. The only requirements are that you have crystalline material and that the grains are below 1 micron in size.
It doesn’t matter if you are studying pharmaceuticals, MOFs or any other materials. If you are struggling to grow crystals, the XtaLAB Synergy-ED may help you solve your unsolvable problems.
The value of dedicated instrumentation
The XtaLAB Synergy-ED is a dedicated electron diffractometer operated by the same CrysAlisPro control software that is used to run Rigaku’s X-ray diffractometers. Those who have used TEMs for diffraction experiments know the pain of sharing time with microscopists and/or configuring the hardware before and after use. XtaLAB Synergy-ED offers you a device specifically for diffraction so it is always calibrated and ready for diffraction and can even be installed alongside your X-ray instrumentation (please check with your local Rigaku representative for site requirements). CrysAlisPro controls all aspects of the diffractometer, removing the need for specialist knowledge, so even if you’ve never used an electron diffractometer before, you’ll be solving structures in no time.
Powerful software
All of the powerful tools X-ray crystallographers have become accustomed to are available for XtaLAB Synergy-ED users as well. With CrysAlisPro-ED, you no longer need to chain together multiple pieces of software and figure out how to convert the data between each to get the job done. CrysAlisPro offers a seamless experience to get you all the way from selecting grains to measurement through to publishable data with one software tool.
How to create a custom run list in CrysAlisPro and positioning the goniometer precisely where you want by Christian Schürmann.
Christian Schürmann explains how to gain full control over your X-ray diffraction experiments by creating custom run lists in CrysAlisᴾʳᵒ In this video, you will learn how to manually edit run lists in both the offline version for data reduction and the online version for starting new experiments. Christian demonstrates how to add single Omega or Phi scans, define start and end angles, and set specific detector Theta and Kappa positions.
Whether you are importing existing lists or building a unique strategy from scratch, these tricks will help you refine your experimental setup.
Crystals in the News
February 4, 2026
Researchers from France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the US reveal how the B12 photoreceptor CarH activates when light breaks a Co–C bond in its B12 chromophore, triggering a chain of structural changes that ultimately dissociates the protein complex with implications for optogenetic tool design.
February 25, 2026
Scientists from Germany, the UK, and the US used the infrared hyperbolic modes of hexagonal boron nitride single crystals tuned to the C=C band of the molecular superconductor κ-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu[N(CN)2]Br to resonance modify its behavior
March 4, 2026
Scientists from China report the synthesis and characterization of bulk hexagonal diamond, lonsdaleite, first discovered in a meteorite 60 years ago.
By Patrick Charbonneau, Michelle Frank, Margriet van der Heijden, and Daniela Monaldi
ISBN 9781009535830
Women in the History of Quantum Physics: Beyond Knabenphysik is a collection of 16 academic papers, each by different authors, edited by Patrick Charbonneau, Michelle Frank, Margriet van der Heijden, and Daniela Monaldi. Each paper provides a combined personal and professional biography of an unsung woman in the field of quantum physics. Widely recognized and lauded researchers like Marie Curie are excluded, as the purpose of the book is to illuminate women from all over the world whose contributions to the field have not been well-acknowledged historically.
In the early days of quantum physics, many of the most publicly prominent researchers were men under 30 years of age. The “boy wonder” aesthetic of the field led to the German nickname of “Knabenphysik” for the field, which translates to “boys’ physics” in English. Charbonneau, Frank, van der Heijden, Monaldi, and the many contributing authors to Women in the History of Quantum Physics are doing their best to shatter the historical illusion that quantum physics was only a man’s field.
That is not to say that the women whose stories are highlighted in Women in the History of Quantum Physics did not experience discrimination in their research on the basis of their gender. Quite a few of these researchers were forced to abandon their work upon marriage. Historically speaking, married women were forbidden from pursuing work outside the home. As these social standards shifted in the 20th century, more and more female scientists were able to pursue lifelong careers in research, though those were not without their respective challenges as well.
A detailed References section is included at the end of each chapter for further reading.
