April 10, 2013: Large differences in size and shape between the triazoline reactants and aziridine products provide the means to document solid-to-solid reactions that follow different phase transformation mechanisms. Denisse de Loera’s JACS article documents the quantitative thermal and photochemical formation of aziridines with bulky substituents.
October 29, 2012: Just published in The Journal of Organic Chemistry as a Feature Article, work carried out with the groups of Profs. J. Morzycki in Poland and R. Santillan in Mexico describes an efficient seven-step synthetic route and the internal dynamics of two beautiful crystalline macrocyclic molecular rotors.
July 19, 2012: Aziridines crystals are “born” in a metastable form - The photodenitrogenation of crystalline triazolines generates the corresponding aziridines in nearly quantitative yields. Using powder X ray diffraction to monitor the photoreaction progress, it was shown that the packing structure of the starting material remains in the product obtained. The study is detailed in Denisse de Loera’s just published Organic Letters paper.
February 16, 2012: 2D Glasses!!! - Molecular rotors confined in two dimensions form rotational glasses and rotational liquids. Cortnie Vogelsberg's recent Journal of Physical Chemistry B article describes this phenomenon with p-divinylphenylene rotators in a hierarchically ordered periodic mesoporous organosilica. The study reveals non-Arrhenius dynamics and an increase in heat capacity characteristic of a phase transition. This unprecedented discovery is an exceptional platform for the development of hypersensitive thermally activated molecular machines. Congrats, Cortnie!
October 24, 2011: Cortnie Vogelsberg’s Chem. Soc. Rev. article “Crystalline molecular machines: function, phase order, dimensionality, and composition” is now available as an Advance Article here! This thought provoking critical review is a great introduction to the developing field of amphidynamic molecular machines and their potential. It is also a great read to catch up on the latest progress in the field. Congrats, Cortnie!
September 23, 2011: How to cross three bridges in one step - A very nice synthetic strategy w
as devised to construct molecular gyroscopes with three bridges (shown in green) in only one step. Their single crystal X-ray structures reveal that the molecular gyroscopes pack in ordered sheets, which will be ideal for structures with interacting polar rotators. Read Patrick Commins’ and Jose Nunez’s synthetic strategy in the Journal of Organic Chemistry.
September 22, 2011: The Case of the Short-Lived Triplets - Using transient spectroscopy to determine the excited lifetimes of nanocrystalline benzophenones, we determined why certain triplet states are extremely short lived in solids but not in solution. The triplet excited states of the substituted benzophenones are quenched by an adjacent molecule in the ground state via a reductive charge transfer (CT) mechanism. Hot off of the press, see the “just accepted” JACS full article describing Greg Kuzmanich and Matt Gard’s work in collaboration with the group of Prof. Guldi.
May 23, 2011: Challenging Reactions Gone Green - Crystals of hexasubstituted ketones exposed to light, without solvents or any other reagents, give quantitative yields of products with all-carbon adjacent quaternary stereogenic centers, which are very difficult to obtain otherwise. Crystalline ketones were easily generated by trapping tertiary carbanions with a carbonyl source and the subsequent solid-state reaction gave the product with complete diastereoselectivity. The method developed by Saori Shiraki just appeared in Photochemical and Photobiological Sciences.
May 20, 2011: Life in the Fast Lane - Using ultrafast pulses
to determine
the excited kinetics of a nanocrystalline indanone, we discovered that the
reaction in crystals can be very fast; starting with a singlet biradical,
visting the triplet state, and then going on to the product in less than
10 nanoseconds. See the Chemical Science edge article describing
Greg Kuzmanich's work in collaboration with Profs. Tito Scaiano,
José-Carlos Netto-Ferrerria, and Matt Platz.
May 18, 2011: First 1D rotor chain! - Collaborative studies bridged by Braulio Rodriguez-Molina between our group at UCLA and the Santillan group in CINVESTAV, Mexico, led to the discovery of the first crystalline array of molecular rotors that undergo correlated motions in a 1D chain. Read this work in: J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2011, 133, 7280.
April 21, 2011: Towards Exploded Stators - Zach
O'Brien's design
and solid state NMR study of a new molecular gyroscope with "exploded"
tri-(meta-terphenyl)methyl stators shows that steric bulk and rigidity
yields robust yet low-density crystals capable of accommodating phenylene
rotation in excess of 100 MHz at room temperature.
April 11, 2011: Add halogen-bonding to the toolbox of crystal engineering
techniques for amphidynamic molecular machines. Cortnie
Vogelsberg's solid-state NMR analysis of crystalline
1,4-bis(iodoethynyl)bicyclo[2.2.2]octane showed that halogen-bonded
molecular rotors sustain ultra-fast rotation. This study, in
collaboration with Prof. Stuart Brown and the group of Prof.
Patrick Batail, validates an unprecedented approach to the
construction of amphidynamic molecular machines where the extended
framework itself provides the template to sustain engineered rotation to
very low temperatures. 
See the ASAP JACS article here!
February 8, 2011: Oxyallyl is Blue! Even though oxyallyl is
a ubiquitous
reaction intermediate involved in many organic reactions, until now, it
had resisted all attempts at direct detection, isolation, and
characterization. 
See here the JACS communication describing Greg Kuzmanich's work
in
collaboration with the groups of Profs. Dirk M. Guldi and Kendall Houk.
See also...
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June 20, 2011: Tasty cupcakes and red wine were involved in our recent celebration of new Drs. Saori Shiraki (picture) and Greg Kuzmanich. Their dissertations on "Synthesis and Solid-State Photochemical Studies of Hexasubstituted Ketones and 1-Pyrazolines" and "Steady-State and Transient Absorption Spectroscopic Studies of Photochemical Mechanisms in Crystalline Solids Utilizing Nanocrystalline Suspensions," respectively, have advanced the field of solid state photochemistry considerably! 
June 11, 2011: Congratulations to Greg Kuzmanich for being awarded the THOMAS L. AND RUTH F. JACOBS AWARD for excellence in organic chemistry research. His award was announced during the 2011 graduation ceremony. 
