tof Sparr’s team at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Basel has seized this opportunity. As part of her doc- toral thesis, she worked on the develop- ment of novel synthesis methods in order to catalytically break open aromatic rings. To this end, she developed an ap- proach known as “aromatic ring-opening metathesis,” which involves breaking open a highly stable aromatic ring and converting it into interesting new com- pounds. During the reaction, a met- al-based catalyst attacks the aromatic ring to form an intermediate, which in turn leads to the formation of new aromatics. Given the small crystal size of less than 1 μm, however, it was not possible to an- alyze the structures of all the newly syn- thesized compounds using X-ray struc- tural analysis — which led the crystal- lographers Dr. Alessandro Prescimone (University of Basel) and Dr. Christian Jandl (ELDICO Scientific) to consider us- ing electron diffraction. “Sample preparation for the analysis was simple,” says Hutskalova. “The crys- tallographers applied a powder of tiny crystal needles to a transmission electron microscope grating and measured the sample using the ELDICO ED-1 electron diffractometer.” Analysis of the diffrac- tion data and various refinements then allowed the reliable elucidation of the molecules’ 3D structure — with statistical calculations confirming the validity of the results. This work has proven the effective- ness of electron diffraction as an alterna- tive to single crystal X-ray analysis for tiny crystals when it comes to elucidating the 3D structure of a new group of substances. “We assume that electron diffraction will undergo further development and play an increasingly central role in structural analysis in organic chemistry in the fu- ture,” Sparr concludes. Further information: Research group C. Sparr, University of Basel ELDICO Scientific Publication in Nature 638 (2025) Publication in Chimia 79 (2025) The researchers place a powder of crystal needles on a grid, load the grid into a transfer container and place this in the electron diffractometer. Christian Jandl (ELDICO Scientific) selects the correct crystal, centers the device and carries out the measurements. The grid with the sample is rotated step by step so that the electron beam hits the crystal from different angles. The computer then calculates the three-dimen- sional structure of the analyzed compound from the various diffraction images. 21 SNI INSight June 2025