Highly Unusual Triangular Crystals of Theophylline: The Influence of Solvent on the Growth Rates of Polar Crystal Faces

A noteworthy feature of the compound theophylline is that it forms crystals with a triangular habit, an extremely rare phenomenon for an organic molecule. Here, we investigate the formation of these crystals, comprised of the polymorph Form II (Pna2₁), and demonstrate that the triangles are obtained from solvents which are highly hydrophobic, or which have a hydrogen bond acceptor group and no hydrogen bond donor group. The formation of the triangular crystal habit is rationalized on the basis of the way such solvents interact with the inequivalent (001) and (001̅) polar crystal faces of Form II. Interactions are significantly stronger at one face than the other, inhibiting growth in one direction and limiting crystal growth to a single, triangle-shaped, growth sector. This rationalization also enabled interesting surface features observed by atomic force microscopy to be interpreted. Furthermore, we report a second, previously unreported, type of triangular crystal of theophylline for which the angle at the tip of the triangle is obtuse rather than acute. These crystals are proposed, with the aid of transmission electron microscopy and crystal structure prediction, to be a new polymorphic form of theophylline.