Mercury is a freeware developed by the
Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre, originally designed as a
crystal structure visualization tool. Mercury helps three dimensional visualization of
crystal structure and assists in drawing and analysis of crystal packing and
intermolecular interactions
An intermolecular force (IMF) (or secondary force) is the force that mediates interaction between molecules, including the electromagnetic forces of attraction
or repulsion which act between atoms and other types of neighbouring particles, e.g. a ...
. Current version Mercury can read "
cif", "
.mol", ".mol2", "
.pdb", ".res", ".sd" and ".xyz" types of files. Mercury has its own file format with filename extension ".mryx".
History
The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) developed and launched two programs, named ConQuest and Mercury that run under Windows and various types of
Unix, including Linux. ConQuest as a search interface to the
Cambridge Structural Database (CSD), with
Fortran code that performs a large variety of tasks, such as
two dimensional and
three-dimensional substructure searching. Mercury introduced as a crystal structure visualizer having the facilities for exploring the
intermolecular contacts. The mercury program entirely written in object oriented
C++. The C++
Qt library is used for building the
GUI and
OpenGL
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...
for three-dimensional graphics rendering. The primary objective of the first generation Mercury is to provide the three dimensional viewing of crystal structures with .MOL2, .PDB, .CIF, .MOL file formats. The first version have approximately 2800 users signed on to the Mercury e-mail announcement list. Mercury 2.0 launched in 2008, with additional tools to interpret and compare packing trends in crystal structures. Mercury version released in 2015 and later provides an additional functionality to generate
3D print
3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer co ...
.
The current Version 4.0 of Mercury developed its visual interface up to a greater extent by comparing with its old versions.
Licence
Mercury is available as a free download software and full version Mercury with more advanced features available with a CSD licence, advanced features are disabled in the absence of such a licence. Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) provides CSD licence to academic institutions.
See also
*
Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre
*
Crystallographic Information File
*
International Union of Crystallography
*
Protein Data Bank (file format)
The Protein Data Bank (PDB) file format is a textual file format describing the three-dimensional structures of molecules held in the Protein Data Bank. The PDB format accordingly provides for description and annotation of protein and nucleic acid ...
*
CrystalExplorer
References
External links
*
{{Chemistry software
Computational chemistry software