Organic Cocrystals: New Strategy for Molecular Collaborative Innovation

Yu Wang, Weigang Zhu, Huanli Dong, Xiaotao Zhang, Rongjin Li, Wenping Hu

Organic cocrystals that are composed of two or more components usually exhibit novel, unpredictable, and even unique properties rather than a simple combination of the properties of their components, such as white-light emission, ambipolar charge transport, nonlinear optics, and ferroelectricity. Since cocrystal engineering represents a novel strategy for synthesizing multifunctional materials, which opens the door for molecular collaborative innovation, it has aroused much attention in recent years. However, as it is also a relatively new research field, it is only in its early stages of development. In order to provide readers with an understanding of the future design of cocrystals for potential applications, a brief review of organic cocrystals is presented here, including an introduction to organic cocrystals as well as discussions of cocrystal preparation, methods and techniques of characterization, and multifunctional applications of cocrystals. Moreover, the outlook for further studies and applications of cocrystal engineering is considered.