Pseudo-tetragonal twinning


6/6: Complete four-fold P2/n twin refinement

All that is left is to refine the structure against the 'HKLF 5' format data. For this, a few changes are needed in the res file from ADDSYM. In particular, the HKLF command must be 'HKLF 5', without a transformation matrix because the data are now indexed for P2/n. Other changes in the file below include 'MERG 0', 'BASF 0.25 0.25 0.25', etc.

monP HKLF 5 ins file

Subsequent refinement is completely stable, no restraints needed. Nevertheless, even at the end, there's some ambiguity over hydroxyl and water hydrogen positions. In a structure with such complex twinning, that's not too surprising. With a sensible numbering scheme and after a few rounds of refinement etc., the structure looks like this:

pinacol monohydrate final

Here's a view of the packing down the pseudo-tetragonal twin axis:

view down pseudo-tetragonal twin axis

Once the twinning and proper space-group symmetry are locked down, completing the structure is straightforward.



1: Introduction
2: Analysis and file set up with XPREP
3: Solve the structure in I2/a using SHELXD
4: Find true space group symmetry using Platon
5: Generate 'HKLF 5' format dataset
6: Complete four-fold P2/n twin refinement

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