Reversibly changing a painkiller structure: a hot topic for a cold case--ibuprofen lysine salt.

Ibuprofen lysine salt can undergo a fully reversible, thermally induced phase transition into a different enantiotropically related polymorphic form. The structures of both the high and low temperature phases were solved using state-of-the-art X-ray powder diffraction methods, showing many similarities both in the molecular conformation and in the crystal packing. The full structural analysis and comparison of the two crystal structures allowed to understand the mechanism of the phase transition and explain its reversible nature in what appears to be a rare case of isosymmetric temperature-driven phase transformation of an organic solid.