Chameleon compounds from the cocrystal continuum

A picture of a chameleon

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Indecisive crystals exploited to find new thermochromic materials

UK scientists have taken a new approach to making temperature-sensitive colour-altering molecular materials. Their strategy is based on a phenomenon where pairs of molecules with similar pKa simultaneously crystallise into differently coloured charged salts and neutral cocrystals. These metastable crystal states can interchange in response to temperature changes, altering their colours in response.