Structure determination

Structure determination, structural determination or structural redetermination or simply redetermination in chemistry is the process of determining the chemical structure of chemical compounds.

Practically, the end result of such process is the obtainment of the coordinates of the atoms in a molecule

The methods by which one can determine or redetermine the structure of a molecule is by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), electron microscopy, and X-ray crystallography (X-ray diffraction). The last technique can produce 3D models at atomic resolution, as long as crystals are available (the reason is that x-ray diffraction needs lots of copies of the molecule being studied that must also be arranged in an organised way).