The Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD)—Present and Future

The Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD) is a comprehensive collection of crystal structure entries for inorganic materials. ICSD is produced by Fachinformationszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, US. The WWW interface is developed in cooperation with the Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble. The ICSD is disseminated in computerized formats with scientific software tools to exploit the content of the database. ICSD includes records of all inorganic crystal structures with atomic coordinates published since 1913. The data base contains 70 102 records as of July 2003. All data are recorded by experts and are checked several times. Apart from updating, data integrity and completeness are important objectives. Incorporation of missing structures, evaluation and correction of data, with the help of authors, users and experts are ongoing activities. This review article gives an overview of the product portfolio and the current activities.