A portable light-delivery device for in situ photocrystallographic experiments in the home laboratory

Photocrystallographic experiments provide valuable information on how crystalline samples interact with light, yielding light-induced structural changes. Studied processes include, among others, solid state chemical reactions, as well as isolation and characterization of various metastable states. Thus, some instrumentation development efforts in the field have been dedicated to facilitating such experiments using a home X-ray source. In this contribution, a portable, easy-to-use and adjustable light-delivery device for home single-crystal diffractometers is described. The whole system consists of adjustable laser-focusing optics and a holder, which can be conveniently attached to a goniometer, as an additional sample conditioning device. The light-delivery device was designed to reduce any goniometer movement limitations. It allows one to conveniently perform photocrystallographic experiments without violation of the X-ray safety protocols, even when changing the light source is necessary. Test in situ photocrystallographic experiments performed on the literature-reported Ni(NO₂)₂(dppe) complex [dppe is bis(diphenylphosphino)ethane] confirm the effectiveness and applicability of the device for conducting linkage isomer single-crystal-to-single-crystal transformations.