[learn_more caption=”Dr. Andrew D. Bond”]

Andrew Bond received his Ph.D. from the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge in 2000, followed by two years as a postdoctoral researcher in the same department. In 2003, he moved to the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy at University of Southern Denmark (Odense), where he became Assistant, then Associate, then full Professor in 2009. In 2013, he joined the Department of Pharmacy at University of Copenhagen as a Professor in the section of Pharmaceutical Technology and Engineering, before returning in 2015 to the Department of Chemistry in Cambridge. His research interests are in crystallography and crystal engineering, especially applied to pharmaceutical compounds. He is a long-standing co-editor for International Union of Crystallography Journals, and is currently co-editor for chemistry and crystal engineering for Acta Crystallographica Section B and IUCrJ. He is an author of almost 300 papers in chemical, pharmaceutical and crystallographic journals.

[/learn_more]

If we are to establish robust structure-property relationships for pharmaceutical solids, it should be necessary to consider length scales ranging from the microscopic to the macroscopic. We are working at the microscopic end of the scale, where we seek to establish direct relationships between crystal structures and mechanical properties. This has been made practical over the last few years by application of nanoindentation techniques to single crystals of a size that can actually be obtained using standard crystallization methods, and also can be studied by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Colleagues at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, have now studied numerous pharmaceutically-relevant crystals in this way, and their results will be summarized in the talk. We have studied some prominent disordered cases, especially aspirin and felodipine, where the microstructure of the crystal also becomes important. Some attempts to relate the results to intermolecular interaction energies will be discussed.