Moreover, smaller rings such as c-P6 do not lie flat on the surface because they are cylindrical, making them difficult to study by scanning probe microscopy. We decided to perform a thorough crystallographic study of these nanorings to get insights into how they pack in the solid state, choosing the sixporphyrin ring c-P6 as a suitable candidate due to its six-fold symmetry and synthetic accessibility. The molecular weight of c-P6•T6 (5.8 kDa) is similar to that of a small protein, such as insulin, and its crystallization and structure determination pose several challenges: (a) loss of solvent from large solvent-accessible voids results in the loss of crystallinity, (b) the large unit cell reduces the achievable diffraction intensity and resolution, (c) significant disorder in the crystals reduces the quality of the X-ray diffraction data. These problems can be mitigated to a certain degree by using a high-flux X-ray source and by choosing non-volatile solvents for crystallization (here, o-dichlorobenzene). Additionally, we used 3,5-di-tert-butylphenyl solubilizing groups to confer solubility and crystallinity. After removing from mother liquor, the crystals have to be manipulated extremely quickly (within seconds), otherwise they start dissolving in all the cryoprotecting oils that we have tested (Fig. ). Large solventaccessible voids containing diffuse electron density from highly disordered solvent molecules made it necessary to use masking procedures (Olex2's implementation of BYPASS). The resolution and data quality do not allow detailed analysis of bond lengths and angles (due to the issues mentioned above), but the resulting models are sufficient to establish the molecular conformation, connectivity and packing.