When chemical reactions occur in solvent or gas, starting materials of thc reaction can move freely, and a statistical collision of the starting materials produces corresponding final products. In the process of collision, the reacting materials may change their structures to those of the reaction intermediate. For understanding the reaction mechanism, it is very useful to calculate quantum-mechanically the highest occupied and lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals ( H O M O , LUMO) for the starting materials, since a reaction pathway can be estimated from the features of H O M O and L U M O . However, a direct obscrvation of the reaction pathway on three-dimensional (3D) structures of the intermediate molecule is impossible since there is currently no method to determine the 311 molecular structurc in the dynamic process of reaction.In particular, so-called "crystalline state reaction" is known to occur throughout the retaining the singlc-crystal form. I n this case, the starting molecules of the chemical reaction are fixed in a crystal lattice, and are in close contact with neighboring molecules. Fortunately. the 3D molecular structure in a crystal can be determined directly in atomic resolution by X-ray crystallography.') By performing a series of X-ray data collections from the sample crystal followed by structure analysis, we can elucidate stroboscopically a reaction pathway by X-ray crystallography. A typical case has been reported by Ohashi ot aL2) f o r [ ( R ) -Icyanoethyl] [( S)-( -)-cu-methylben7ylamine]bis(dimethyl-glyoximato) cobalt( I I I), a kind of cobaloxime complex. A cyanoethyl group of this complex racemi7es by X-ray cxposure in a very long reaction time of twenty days. Eight sets of X-ray intensity data for one crystal were collected successively by a conventional four diffractometer. and the reaction pathway was proved directly by time-resolved X-ray crystallography. Another noteworthy example of time-resolved X-ray crystallography is a recent study of the reaction intermediate of guanosine triphosphate hydrolysis in the protein Ha-Ras p2 I . 3 ) This study was done by a Laue technique4) with white X-rays from a synchrotron radiation facility. However, detailed descriptions for this topics are not given here since protein crystallography is not what is originally intended in this volume.Although time-resolved X-ray crystallography is a very powerful techniquc to demonstrate the intermediate structures of chemical reactions, it requires very strict experimental conditions in practice. The first requirement is that the chemical reaction must proceed without the degradation of a single crystal form until the final stage of the reaction. The crystal of starting materials often breaks into pieces in the process of the reaction, since the chemical reaction certainly gives rise t o 31) structural change at least in a part of the molecule, and this usually causes the destruction of the starting crystal lattice. The most important problem in time-resolved X-ray crystallography is how to design a 25 A ...