In this work, we investigated the L-alanine’s crystal structure under the influence of a mixture of multiple hydrophobic and hydrophilic amino acid additives using our Metal-Assisted and Microwave-Accelerated Evaporative Crystallization (MA-MAEC) technique. Our experimental results show that the incorporation of a mixture of multiple additives to L-alanine solution inhibits the growth rate of L-alanine’s {120} face and significantly changes the morphology of L-alanine crystals. The use of the MA-MAEC technique afforded for up to 5-fold reduction in time of crystallization of L-alanine in the presence of a mixture of amino acid additives, as compared to control experiments carried out without microwave heating and metal nanoparticles. To elucidate our experimental observations, computational theoretical simulations (Materials Studio 7.0 software) were carried out. In this regard, the built-in method was used to calculate the thermodynamic energy of L-alanine’s unit cell with and without the incorporation of additives. The surface docking method was used to study the interactions of the additives with the surface of L-alanine crystals. Results from the theoretical simulations corroborated with experimental results, and showed that the hydrophobic amino acid additives results in a difference in energy between pure L-alanine and L-alanine with the adsorption of additives.

Crystal engineering of L-alanine in the presence of multiple amino acid additives using metal-assisted and microwave-accelerated evaporative crystallization

249th National Meeting (2015)

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