The growing importance of crystalline molecular flasks and the crystalline sponge method

This article showcases recent advancements made using crystalline molecular flasks and the widening list of prospective applications for the crystalline sponge method. This expansion has coincided with an increasing number of materials termed crystalline sponges, and a report of a predictive means of identifying candidates from crystallographic databases. The crystalline sponge method’s primary application has been determination of absolute configuration, and this has evolved from the analysis of carefully chosen planar aromats to more diverse identification of natural products, biological metabolites, and analysis of volatile chemical components. However with time-resolved X-ray crystallography providing arguably the most informative atomic scale insights of dynamic chemical processes, this application of the crystalline sponge method may soon eclipse structural determination in terms of importance.