Hello forum friends,
I'm compiling a series of crystallization notes that I've been working on while figuring out the results of the solubility studies I posted a little while back.
What I've discovered is that DMT can exist as at least 3 polymorphs, which was pretty exciting to me. I was hoping to discuss this earlier, but the task of explaining everything has been difficult to say the least. I had to read 17 articles or something like that on polymorphism before I learned how to read the solubility curves well enough to explain this trimorphic system, and the total number of articles I've read on solubility curves in general is somewhere like 35-40+.
I realized that the post I put originally on DMT's solubility was incomplete -- there were a couple of anomalous points that I left out intentially, thinking they were wrong, but they were actually correct and I had just misinterpreted them. So I felt a little remiss about leaving that open too.
I really love this forum, and I used to learn everything on here back in the day, so now I'm happy to give a little something back that I'm, well, pretty proud of in truth. I didn't want anybody to be at a disadvantage if I were to talk about enantiomers and monotropes, transition temperatures and kinetics of phase changes, so what I decided to do is start from the beginning and create a guide to crystallization that I think will prove extremely useful. (I mean, who DOESN'T love the crystallization process, right?)
I did my best to break it up into digestible 1-page chunks of different topics, Part 1 dealing with crystallization basics and building up to how the crystallization process is controlled and Part 2 dealing with the practical aspects of DMT crystallization and how to really control the process and design crystals the way you want.
The topics in this series are the following:
I. Crystallization & Supersolubility
II. The Solubility Curve
III. Nucleation
IV. Crystal Growth
V. The Metastable Zone
VI. The Metastable Zone Width
VII. Mapping the Crystallization Process
VIII. Seeding
IX. Theory of Crystal Control
For fun I included three of the graphs that I think are the most important, yet will be discussed in Part 2. But you can see how the curves of the three pulls I did come together to create this trimorphic system.
Hope you enjoy
