Crystal Impact Outlook to 2026

December 18, 2025

Here is what you can expect from Crystal Impact in 2026:

Diamond 5.2 The new Diamond version 5.2 will offer new and enhanced functions for working with H-bonds and non-bonding contacts: • Context menu commands to specifically select H-bonds or contacts from connection parameters or from van der Waals radii sums to expand your structure picture to the next neighbours. • H-bonds and contacts infos to atoms and/or molecules in the neighbourhood through the info tip window as well as in the Properties pane. Additionally there will be more options to represent voids in MOFs such as spheroids, ellipsoids, or cylinders. The release of version 5.2 is now planned for mid 2026. In later 2026 we will start preparing for version 5.3 enabling overlays of one or more molecules or fragments in a crystal or molecular structure. The updates to version 5.2 and 5.3 are free-of-charge for all customers of version 5 (and version 4).

Match! For 2026 we plan to add a Williamson-Hall plot functionality for crystallite size and strain analysis. This will be implemented as an additional page of the "Crystallite Size Estimation" window, so that you will find all the functionality for size-strain analysis in one place. In addition, we will switch over to using the more recent version 6 of the Qt run-time library. The main advantage of this will be that on Windows High-DPI screens are now fully supported, so that the resolution of the Match! program window will increase significantly. The export of peak width data (FWHM) will also be improved, so that you can access your peak width results more easily, e.g. for using them in external spreadsheet applications. In addition to improving the Match! software itself, we would like to create some new or updated tutorial videos again.

Endeavour 2 We are currently finalizing and testing Endeavour version 2. The main new improvement in the upcoming version 2.0 will be the option to run multiple calculations with different seed-values in parallel on multiple CPU cores, making better use of multiple existing processor cores. Further impovements concern the treatment of molecules on special sites and the structure solution from electron diffraction data. Some other functions will be added as well, like the import and export of configurations, the saving of step-scan data, and the display of the cost function/R-value diagram in the Results Report. A Watch command will follow in a subsequent version 2.1 to observe changes in a crystal structure data file. Each time it gets updated, e.g. by an external application like some molecular modeling program or similar, Endeavour will update the crystal structure picture automatically, using the current Auto-Build Settings. The release of Endeavour version 2.0 is now planned for the first half of 2026. Users of Endeavour version 1 can update at reduced cost; customers who purchased after December 31, 2023 can even update free-of-charge.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Klaus Brandenburg and Holger Putz