How much a substance converted into a crystals?

Dear all,

I am quite new in biophysic.

I have successfully crystallized one inorganic substance. I would like to know which percentage of this substance was crystallized.
X-ray diffraction cannot help in my case, could you please give me some hint?

Thanks for any help!

Hello,

To my knowledge, XRD is the best technique for determination of degree of crystallization of a substance.
But, if its not working, a try can be given to DSC. Calculation of degree of crystallization by the data obtained from this technique is also quite easy simply by making use of exothermic and endothermic peaks.

You can also refer to the following article:

http://www.risoe.dk/afm/symp22/pdf/risoms22_377-382.pdf

Regards

Sorry for the tardiness of my reply, but I am new to the Forum.

For inorganic crystals there is very little, if any, solvent incorporated into the crystal lattice. So a simple calculation based on the dry weight of your crystals compared to the starting amount of material should give you a reasonable estimate of the actual per cent of material in the crystals.

For biologic matierals, such as protein or nucleic acids, a significant amount of solvent is in the lattice - upwards of 50% and either the crystal density needws to be determined experimentally, or the approximate unit cell dimensions are needed from X-ray analysis to estimate how much of the crystals are the molecule of interest via the Matthews' Equation (B.W. Matthews "Determination of molecular weight from protein crystals", J. mol. Biol 82:513 (1974)