Pance Naumov

• PhD
• New York University Abu Dhabi

Topological [2+2] cycloaddition is known to provide a convenient synthetic route for cyclobutane derivatives from favorably dispositioned dienes. In this study, new (2Z,4E)‐2‐(2,4‐difluorophenyl)‐5‐phenylpenta‐2,4‐dienenitrile (HDE), (2Z,4E)‐2‐(2,4‐difluorophenyl)‐5‐(p‐tolyl)penta‐2,4‐dienenitrile (MeDE), (2Z,4E)‐5‐(4‐chlorophenyl)‐2‐(2,4‐difluorop...

Flexible organic crystals represent a novel class of smart materials that open many opportunities for optical applications. While it has been established that elastic or plastic deformation of slender molecular crystals can be commonly induced by external intervention, crystals that grow in bent or curled shapes naturally are rarely reported. This...

Photomechanically responsive dynamic molecular crystals are central to developing efficient, rapid, and robust materials capable of conversion of light energy to mechanical work. However, unlike some other, mainly photochromic molecular solar thermal energy storage (MOST) systems, solids that undergo photoinduced [2+2] cycloaddition have not been t...

Dynamic organic crystals are becoming recognized as some of the fastest materials for converting light or heat to mechanical work. The degree of deformation and the response time of any actuating material are often exclusive of each other; however, both factors influence the material’s overall performance limits. Unlike polymers, whose disordered s...

Photomechanically responsive dynamic molecular crystals are central to developing efficient, rapid, and robust materials capable of conversion of light energy to mechanical work. However, unlike some other, mainly photochromic molecular solar thermal energy storage (MOST) systems, solids in which the photoinduced [2+2] cycloaddition undergoes have...

Photomechanical crystals act as light‐driven material‐machines that can convert the energy carried by photons into kinetic energy via shape deformation or displacement, and this capability holds a paramount significance for the development of photoactuated devices. This transformation is usually attributed to anisotropic expansion or contraction of...

Urinary catheters serve as critical medical devices in clinical practice. However, the currently used urinary catheters lack efficient antibacterial and lubricating properties, often leading to discomfort with patients and even severe urinary infections. Herein, a new strategy of supramolecular assembly and disassembly of chitosan (Cs) is developed...

The lack of control over the crystal growth in a systematic way currently stands as an unsurmountable impediment to the preparation of dynamic crystals as soft robots; in effect, the mechanical effects of molecular crystals have become a subject of scattered reports that pertain only to specific crystal sizes and actuation conditions, often without...

The lack of control over the crystal growth in a systematic way currently stands as an unsurmountable impediment to the preparation of dynamic crystals as soft robots; in effect, the mechanical effects of molecular crystals have become a subject of scattered reports that pertain only to specific crystal sizes and actuation conditions, often without...

Molecular crystals carry a great potential as new soft smart materials, with a plethora of recent examples overcoming the major obstacle of mechanical flexibility, and this research direction holds enormous potential to revolutionize optics, electronics, medicine, and space exploration. However, shaping organic crystals into desired shapes and size...

Molecular crystals carry a great potential as new soft smart materials, with a plethora of recent examples overcoming the major obstacle of mechanical flexibility, and this research direction holds enormous potential to revolutionize optics, electronics, medicine, and space exploration. However, shaping organic crystals into desired shapes and size...

Controlling polymorphism, namely, the occurrence of multiple crystal forms for a given compound, is still an open technological challenge that needs to be addressed for the reliable manufacturing of crystalline functional materials. Here, we devised a series of 13 organic crystals engineered to embody molecular fragments undergoing specific nanosca...

Flexible crystals with unique mechanical properties have presented potential for applications in optoelectronics, soft robotics and sensors. However, there have been no reports of low‐temperature‐resistant flexible crystals with second‐order nonlinear optical properties (NLO). Here, we report flexible chiral Schiff‐base crystals capable of efficien...

Air moisture is a valuable and omnipresent resource of fresh water. However, traditional water collectors come with an enduring problem of the water‐release step, which requires special devices and additional energy to remove the water from the adsorbent, such as heat, sunlight, or both. Herein, we report the first composite conical hollow hydrogel...

Crystals can be found in many shapes but do not usually grow as spirals. Here we show that applying a non-uniform layer of a polymer blend onto slender centimeter-size organic crystals prestrains the crystals into hybrid dynamic elements with spiral shapes that respond reversibly to environmental variations in temperature or humidity by curling. Ex...

In the field of materials science, dynamic molecular crystals have attracted significant attention as a novel class of energy-transducing materials. However, their development into becoming fully functional actuators remains somewhat limited. This study focuses on one family of dynamic crystalline materials and delves into exploring the efficiency...

Air moisture is a valuable and omnipresent resource of fresh water. However, traditional water collectors come with an enduring problem of the water‐release step, which requires special devices and additional energy to remove the water from the adsorbent, such as heat, sunlight, or both. Herein, we report the first composite conical hollow hydrogel...

We report both cracking and self-healing in crystals occurring during a thermal phase transition, followed by a topochemical polymerization. A squaramide-based monomer was designed where the azide and alkyne units of adjacent molecules are positioned favorably for a topochemical click reaction. The monomer undergoes spontaneous single-crystal-to-si...

Flexible crystals with unique mechanical properties have presented enormous applications in optoelectronics, soft robotics and sensors. However, there have been no reports of low‐temperature‐resistant flexible crystals with second‐order nonlinear optical properties (NLO). Here, we report the flexible chiral Schiff‐base crystals capable of efficient...

The realm of self-healing materials integrates chemical and physical mechanisms that prevent wear and fracturing and extend the operational lifetime. Unlike the favorable rheology of amorphous soft materials that facilitates efficient contact between fragments, the efficiency of recovery of atomistically ordered materials is restricted by slower in...

Emission from crystalline organic solids is often quenched by nonemissive energy-transfer deexcitation processes. While dispersion of fluorophores in polymers or other hosts has been used to enhance the emission intensity, this strategy results in randomization of guest orientation and optical losses at grain boundaries. Here, we report the doping...

The dense and ordered molecular arrangements endow dynamic molecular crystals with fast response, rapid energy conversion, low energy dissipation, and strong coupling between heat/light and mechanical energy. Most of the known dynamic crystals can only respond to a single stimulus, and materials that can respond to multiple stimuli are rare. Here,...

The dense and ordered molecular arrangements endow dynamic molecular crystals with fast response, rapid energy conversion, low energy dissipation, and strong coupling between heat/light and mechanical energy. Most of the known dynamic crystals can only respond to a single stimulus, and materials that can respond to multiple stimuli are rare. Here,...

Structurally ordered soft materials that respond to complementary stimuli are susceptible to control over their spatial and temporal morphostructural configurations by intersectional or combined effects such as gating, feedback, shape‐memory, or programming. In the absence of general and robust design and prediction strategies for their mechanical...

Various mechanical effects have been reported with molecular materials, yet organic crystals capable of multiple dynamic effects are rare, and at present, their performance is worse than some of the common actuators. Here, we report a confluence of different mechanical effects across three polymorphs of an organic crystal that can efficiently conve...

The rapid release of gas by a chemical reaction to generate momentum is one of the most fundamental ways to elicit motion that could be used to sustain and control the motility of objects. We report that hollow crystals of a three‐dimensional supramolecular metal complex that releases gas by photolysis can propel themselves or other objects and adv...

Structurally ordered soft materials that respond to complementary stimuli are susceptible to control over their spatial and temporal morphostructural configurations via intersectional or combined effects such as gating, feedback, shape‐memory, or programming. In absence of general and robust design and prediction strategies for their mechanical pro...

The rapid release of gas by a chemical reaction to generate momentum is one of the most fundamental ways to elicit motion that could be used to sustain and control the motility of objects. We report that hollow crystals of a three‐dimensional supramolecular metal complex that releases gas by photolysis can propel themselves or other objects and adv...

The cornerstones of the advancement of flexible optoelectronics are the design, preparation, and utilization of novel materials with favorable mechanical and advanced optoelectronic properties. Molecular crystalline materials have emerged as a class of underexplored yet promising materials due to the reduced grain boundaries and defects anticipated...

Organic single crystals quickly emerge as dense yet light and nearly defect‐free media for emissive elements. Integration of functionalities and control over the emissive properties is currently being explored for a wide range of these materials to benchmark their performance against organic emissive materials diluted in powders or films. Here, we...

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide, however, there is currently no drug‐based treatment. Plants that exhibit antioxidant properties have shown promising anticataract effects, likely because they supplement the activity of glutathione, the major antioxidant in lens cells. An extract of Cleome rupicola, a desert plant found in the...

The multifaceted switches are part of our everyday life from the macroscopic to the molecular world. A molecular switch operating in the solution and in the crystalline state is very different. In this review, we summarize the state‐of‐the‐art of smart molecular crystal switches based on molecular martensites. These crystal switches respond to exte...

Organic single crystals quickly emerge as dense yet light and nearly defect‐free media for emissive elements. Integration of functionalities and control over the emissive properties are currently being explored for a wide range of these materials to benchmark their performance against organic emissive materials diluted in powders or films. Here, we...

Organic molecular crystals have historically been viewed as delicate and fragile materials. However, recent studies have revealed that many organic crystals, especially those with high aspect ratios, can display significant flexibility, elasticity, and shape adaptability. The discovery of mechanical compliance in organic crystals has recently enabl...

Woven architectures are prepared by physical entanglement of fibrous components to expand one-dimensional material into two-dimensional sheets with enhanced strength and resilience to wear. Here, we capitalize on the elastic properties of long organic crystals with a high aspect ratio to prepare an array of centimeter-size woven network structures....

Plants and animals that thrive in arid regions utilize the diurnal changes in environmental temperature and humidity to optimize their water budget by combining water-harvesting mechanisms and morphophysiological traits. The Athel tamarisk ( Tamarix aphylla ) is a halophytic desert shrub that survives in arid, hypersaline conditions by excreting co...

The growing freshwater scarcity has caused increased use of membrane desalination of seawater as a relatively sustainable technology that promises to provide long-term solution for the increasingly water-stressed world. However, the currently used membranes for desalination on an industrial scale are inevitably prone to fouling that results in decr...

The performance of any engineering material is naturally limited by its structure, and while each material suffers from one or multiple shortcomings when considered for a particular application, these can be potentially circumvented by hybridization with other materials. By combining organic crystals with MXenes as thermal absorbers and charged pol...

Despite being researched for decades, shape-shifting molecular crystals have yet to claim their spot as an actuating materials class among the primary functional materials. While the process for developing and commercializing materials can be lengthy, it inevitably starts with building an extensive knowledge base, which for molecular crystal actuat...

Levocetirizine is an orally administrated, second‐generation antihistaminic active pharmaceutical ingredient that has been used to treat symptoms of allergy and long‐term hives for over 25 years. Despite the wide use of this compound, its crystal structure has remained unknown. Here we report the application of 3D electron diffraction (3D ED)/Micro...

The capability of stimulated response by mechanical deformation to induce motion or actuation is the foundation of lightweight organic, dynamic materials for designing light and soft robots. Various biomimetic soft robots are constructed to demonstrate the vast versatility of responses and flexibility in shape-shifting. We now report that the integ...

In the last century, molecular crystals functioned predominantly as a means for determining the molecular structures via X-ray diffraction, albeit as the century came to a close the response of molecular crystals to electric, magnetic, and light fields revealed that the physical properties of molecular crystals were as rich as the diversity of mole...

Levocetirizin ist ein oral verabreichtes Antihistaminikum der zweiten Generation, dass seit über 25 Jahren zur Behandlung von Allergiesymptomen und langanhaltender Nesselsucht eingesetzt wird. Trotz der weiten Verbreitung dieser Verbindung war ihre Kristallstruktur bisher unbekannt. Hier berichten wir über die Anwendung der 3D‐Elektronenbeugung (3D...

Chemical and morphological traits of natural substrates that can propel and transport fluids over their surfaces have long provided inspiration for the engineering of artificial materials that can harvest and collect water from aerial humidity. Here we report that the gradual widening of parallel microchannels on a surface of a slowly subliming hex...

Following a well-established practice of publishing commentaries to articles of other authors who work on materials that were earlier studied by them (n.b. six published comments[1-6]), Marek Szafra\'nski(MS) and Andrzej Katrusiak (AK) have filed on the preprint server arXiv a manuscript entitled "On the giant deformation and ferroelectricity of gu...

One of the typical haptic elements are natural hairy structures that animals and plants rely on for feedback. Although these hair sensors are an admirable inspiration, the development of active flow sensing components having low elastic moduli and high aspect ratios remains a challenge. Here, we report a new sensing approach based on a flexible, th...

Ionic Liquids‐Assisted Perovskites In article number 2200856, Quanyao Zhu, Liang Li, Pancˇe Naumov, Hanlin Hu, and co‐workers introduced ionic liquids MAAc into the PbI2 layer by a sequential deposition process. They found that the addition of MAAc has lowered the perovskite formation enthalpy and suppressed the trap state density, delivering a cha...

Organic single crystals that are capable of transmitting light and charge are quickly shaping into a new forefront of research in photoelectronic materials that is thought to hold a tremendous potential for the broader field of organic electronics. However, one of the main disadvantages that currently stands against the direct application of organi...

Hybrid materials capitalize on the properties of individual materials to attain a specific combination of performance assets that is not available with the individual components alone. We describe a straightforward approach to preparation of sandwich-type hybrid dynamic materials that combine metals as electrically conductive components and polymer...

One of the typical haptic elements are natural hairy structures that animals and plants rely on for feedback. Although these hair sensors are an admirable inspiration, the development of active flow sensing components having low elastic moduli and high aspect ratios remains a challenge. Here, we report a new sensing approach based on a flexible thi...

The state-of-the-art microelectromechanical systems (MEMSs) technology faces challenges in meeting the requirements of the next decade regarding improved performance, functionality, and power consumption, which can be addressed by resorting to new actuating materials. Dynamic molecular single crystals have been explored as actuating elements; howev...

Much of the research efforts of late that are directed towards enhancement of the efficiency of perovskite‐based photovoltaics have been focused on the application of ionic liquids (ILs) in a one‐step approach, with some remarkable preliminary results. On the contrary, the details of the alternative two‐step approach, such as the role of the ILs in...

Operation of temperature sensors over extended temperature ranges, and particularly in extreme conditions, poses challenges with both the mechanical integrity of the sensing material and the operational range of the sensor. With an emissive bendable organic crystalline material, here we propose that organic crystals can be used as mechanically robu...

The chemical reactions underlying the emission of light in fireflies and other bioluminescent beetles are some of the most thoroughly studied processes by scientists worldwide. Despite these remarkable efforts, fierce academic arguments continue around even some of the most fundamental aspects of the reaction mechanism behind the beetle bioluminesc...

Organic crystals that are capable to deform (reversibly or irreversibly) similar to polymer materials have been widely reported over the past ten years. However, most of the reported organic crystals can only be elastically bent within a narrow temperature range, and reports on their thermal behavior that would encourage applications of these energ...

Dynamic organic crystals are rapidly gaining traction as a new class of smart materials for energy conversion, however, they are only capable of very small strokes (<12%) and most of them operate through energetically cost-prohibitive processes at high temperatures. We report on the exceptional performance of an organic actuating material with exce...

Perovskite solar cells have attracted widespread attention due to their impressive power conversion efficiencies, high absorption coefficients, tunable bandgap, and straightforward manufacturing protocols. However, in the process of further development and optimization towards mass‐production, the long‐term stability stands as one of the most urgen...

The outstanding performance and facile processability turn hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites into one of the most sought-after class of semiconducting materials for optoelectronics. Yet, their translation into real-world applications necessitates that challenges with their chemical stability and poor mechanical robustness are first addressed. He...

Flexible organic crystals with unique mechanical properties and excellent optical properties are of paramount significance for their wide applications in various research fields such as adaptive optics and soft robotics. However, low‐temperature‐resistant flexible organic crystal with circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) has never been reported....

Hybrid Organic–Inorganic Perovskites In article number 2109374, Luca Catalano, Panče Naumov, and co‐workers address the poor mechanical robustness of bulk hybrid organic–inorganic perovskite (HOIP) crystals by demonstrating that broken centimeter‐size single crystals of a typical HOIP, MAPbI3, can readily self‐repair under mild compressive forces a...

Over the past decade, perovskite photovoltaics have approached other currently available technologies and proven to be the most prospective type of solar cells. Although the many‐sided research in this very active field has generated consistent results with regards to their undisputed consistently increasing power conversion efficiency, it also pro...

Elastic organic crystals are the materials foundation of future lightweight flexible electronic, optical and sensing devices, yet precise control over their deformation has not been accomplished. Here, we report a general non-destructive approach to remote bending of organic crystals. Flexible organic crystals are coupled to magnetic nanoparticles...

Flexible organic crystals with unique mechanical properties and excellent optical properties are of paramount significance for their wide applications in various research fields such as adaptive optics and soft robotics. However, low‐temperature‐resistant flexible organic crystal with circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) ability has never been r...

Martensitic transformations are well documented in metals and alloys where the atoms connected via metallic bonds rearrange concertedly and rapidly; however, due to the metal atoms, these materials are inherently very dense and add significant weight and bulkiness to actuating devices. Here, remarkably rapid lattice switching of molecular martensit...

Applications in extreme conditions, such as those encountered in space exploration, require lightweight materials that can retain their elasticity in extremely cold environments. However, cryogenic treatment of most soft polymeric and elastomeric materials results in complete loss of their ability for elastic flow, whereby such materials that are n...

Reshaping of elongated organic crystals that can be used as semiconductors, waveguides or soft robotic grippers by application of force or light is now a commonplace, however mechanical response of organic crystals to changes in humidity has not been accomplished yet. Here, we report a universal approach to instigating a humidity response into elas...

Organic crystals, although widely studied, have not been considered nascent candidate materials in engineering design. Here we summarize the mechanical properties of organic crystals that have been reported over the past three decades, and we establish a global mechanical property profile that can be used to predict and identify mechanically robust...

Reshaping of elongated organic crystals that can be used as semiconductors, waveguides or soft robotic grippers by application of force or light is now a commonplace, however mechanical response of organic crystals to changes in humidity has not been accomplished yet. Here, we report a universal approach to instigating a humidity response into elas...