X-Ray Crystallography

5.0 Use of 3D Chime figures

2D ball-and-stick or ORTEP-style plots have been the traditional way of illustrating the 3D structure in a crystal for many years. However, it can sometimes be particularly difficult to communicate a complex three-dimensional structure in this way. With the increasing popularity of electronic publishing, new and improved methods that enable a 3D representation of crystal structures are now available. 3D diagrams have several advantages over their 2D counterparts that appear in print:

• Fully interactive - figures can be rotated and resized on-screen, giving viewers a better opportunity to understand complex structures  
• Unlimited use of full colour - different atom types can be easily distinguished and different sections of a structure can even be highlighted to show complex structural motifs  
• Structures can be displayed in a variety of styles - from simple ball-and-stick to van-der-waals space filling views                

By making full use of the RSC's free Electronic Supplementary Information (ESI) service and the free Chime plug-in, these new methods of electronic publishing can be easily utilised by authors to better communicate their results to readers. Details of how to create 3D images can be found in the 'Acceptable Formats' section of the RSC website.