Introduction to the Mechanochemistry of Solids

Adam Michalchuk is an Assistant Professor of Physical Chemistry at the School of Chemistry, University of Birmingham, UK, and a Wilhelm-Ostwald Fellow at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin, Germany. Adam leads an interdisciplinary research team with the aim of understanding how to control chemical reactivity (usually in the solid state) using mechanical force. This includes using and developing atomistic simulation tools to understand mechanochemical reactivity, and a focus on studying mechanochemical reactions using international synchrotron and neutron facilities, for which he was awarded the ISIS Neutron Facility Impact Award in 2022. Further details can be found on the group website. Ana Belenguer is a senior research fellow at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, UK. She has been working with Professor Jeremy Sanders on various projects funded by EPSRC grants since 2002, initially on Dynamic Covalent Chemistry (DCC) in solution. Since 2009 she has been pioneering the field of fundamental studies of solid state DCC by ball mill grinding, focusing on elucidating the driving forces behind mechanochemical reactivity in organic solids.

Elena Boldyreva is a Leading Researcher at the Boreskov Institute of Catalysis Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences and a Professor at the Chair of Solid-State Chemistry, Novosibirsk State University. She graduated from Novosibirsk State University in 1982 and received her PhD in Physical Chemistry in 1988 and her Dr. Sci. in Solid State Chemistry in Russia. Elena Boldyreva is an Honorary Doctor of Sciences of the University of Edinburgh, a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Slovenia and a Member of the Academia Europea. She was a Humboldt Fellow and has spent many research terms in Germany, the UK, Italy, and France.

Her main interests are in the reactivity of organic solids, mechanochemistry, high-pressure research, polymorphism of drugs and biomimetics, cocrystals, molecular materials, the properties of hydrogen bonds. She also pioneered studies of the relation between chemical pressure and solid-state reactivity, with particular interest in photo- and thermo- mechanical effects.