Preface

Chapter 7 **Modeling Ice Crystal Formation of Water in**

Chapter 8 **Crystallization: From the Conformer to the Crystal 201**

Chapter 9 **Chemical Vapor Transport Reactions–Methods, Materials,**

Chapter 10 **Growth and Development of Sapphire Crystal for LED**

Chapter 12 **Inorganic Nanostructures Decorated Graphene 377**

**Engineering and Properties 403** Chun-Chang Ou and Chung-Sung Yang

Chapter 11 **Crystal Growth by Electrodeposition with Supercritical Carbon**

Chapter 13 **Metal Chalcogenides Tetrahedral Molecular Clusters: Crystal**

Masato Sone, Tso-Fu Mark Chang and Hiroki Uchiyama

Hong Ngee Lim, Nay Ming Huang, Chin Hua Chia and Ian Harrison

Huili Tang, Hongjun Li and Jun Xu

J.S. Redinha, A.J. Lopes Jesus, A.A.C.C. Pais and J. A. S. Almeida

Peer Schmidt, Michael Binnewies, Robert Glaum and Marcus

**Biological System 185** Zhi Zhu He and Jing Liu

**Section 2 Inorganic Systems 225**

**VI** Contents

**Modeling 227**

**Applications 307**

**Dioxide Emulsion 335**

Schmidt

Crystal growth is the key step of a great number of very important applications. The devel‐ opment of new devices and products, from the traditional microelectronic industry to phar‐ maceutical industry and many others, depends on crystallization processes.

The objective of this book is not to cover all areas of crystal growth but just present, as speci‐ fied in the title, important selected topics, as applied to organic and inorganic systems. All authors have been selected for being key researchers in their field of specialization, working in important universities and research labs around the world.

The first section is mainly devoted to biological systems and covers topics like proteins, bone and ice crystallization. The second section brings some applications to inorganic sys‐ tems and describes more general growth techniques like chemical vapor crystallization and electrodeposition.

This book is mostly recommended for students working in the field of crystal growth and for scientists and engineers in the fields of crystalline materials, crystal engineering and the industrial applications of crystallization processes.

> **Dr. Sukarno Olavo Ferreira** Physics Department of the Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Brasil

**Section 1**

**Biological and Other Organic Systems**

**Biological and Other Organic Systems**

**Chapter 1**

**Proteins and Their Ligands: Their Importance and How**

The importance of structural biology has been highlighted in the past few years not only as part of drug discovery programs in the pharmaceutical industry but also by structural ge‐ nomics programs. Although the function of a protein can be studied by several biochemical and or biophysical techniques a molecular understanding of a protein can only be obtained by combining functional data with the three-dimensional structure. In principle three tech‐ niques exist to determine a protein structure, namely X-ray crystallography, nuclear mag‐ netic resonance (NMR) and electron microscopy (EM). X-ray crystallography contributes over 90 % of all structures in the protein data bank (PDB) and emphasis the importance of this technique. Crystallization of a protein is a tedious route and although a lot of knowl‐ edge about crystallization has been gained in the last decades, one still cannot predict the outcome. The sometimes unexpected bottlenecks in protein purification and crystallization have recently been summarized and possible strategies to obtain a protein crystal were postulated [1]. This book chapter will tackle the next step: How to crystallize protein-ligand

A single crystal structure of a protein however, is not enough to completely understand the molecular function. Conformational changes induced by for example ligand binding cannot be anticipated *a priori*. The determination of particular structures of one protein, for example with bound ligand(s) is required to visualize the different states within a reaction cycle. Ide‐ ally, one would trap an open conformation without any ligand, an open ligand-bound and a closed form with the bound molecule as well as the closed ligand-free protein to visualize

Within this chapter, the structural conformational changes induced by ligand binding with respect to the methods chosen for the crystallization are described. Here three distinct pro‐ tein families are exemplarily described: first, where one substrate or ligand is bound, sec‐

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 Hoeppner et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

Astrid Hoeppner, Lutz Schmitt and Sander H.J. Smits

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

complexes or intermediate steps of the reaction cycle?

the conformational changes occurring during catalysis in detail.

**to Crystallize Them**

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/53951

**1. Introduction**
