The Cambridge Structural Database is produced by the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre, a registered charity in the United Kingdom with the mission of collecting and making available high-quality crystal structure and structural chemistry information. CSD is the largest repository for small-molecule organic and metal-organic crystal structures, with more 800,000 entries. Along with data about the crystal structure, each entry includes chemical/physical property data and associated journal article references.
CSD has long been a data repository in which chemists, engineers, and materials scientists have deposited their crystal structure data, and many journals require deposition in the CSD as part of the article submission process. The database currently contains X-ray and neutron diffraction analyses for carbon-containing compounds composed of up to 1000 atoms. Types of substances represented include:
- Organics
- Organometallics
- Metal complexes
- Compounds of main group elements
- Peptides of up to 24 residues
- Mono-, di-, and tri-nucleotides
The database is searchable by structure, text, or the journal article that the crystal structure accompanies, and it permits substructure searching. Entries for each compound include:
- Complete literature citations (title, author, journal, etc.)
- Compound information (name, formula, and structural representation in two or three dimensions)
- Textual information (details of disorder, non-standard experimental conditions, absolute configuration, etc.)
- Crystallographic information (atomic coordinates, cell parameters, space group, unit cell information, etc.)
