Latest Crystallography Stories

Researchers discover why atoms in solids show a preference for certain structures Nature likes some symmetries, but dislikes others. Ordered solids often display a so-called 6-fold rotation symmetry. To achieve this kind of symmetry, the atoms in a plane surround themselves with six neighbors in an arrangement similar to that found in honeycombs. As opposed to this, ordered materials with 7-fold, 9-fold or 11-fold symmetries are never observed in nature. Researchers from the Max Planck...

Unless you're interested in isotopic labeling, neutrons don't figure much into chemistry. Neutral in charge and a bit bigger than a proton, the neutron neither gives an atom its name nor determines much about its reactivity.But neutrons have some unsung properties that make them useful for investigating matter. Because they are neutral, they can penetrate deeper into a sample than electrons can. Because they have mass and spin, they have a magnetic moment and can probe magnetism. Because they...

Crystals resemble some biological structures; finding opens door to new technologiesX-rays can do a lot of useful things -- detect broken bones, tumors and dental cavities, analyze atoms in diverse materials and screen luggage at airports -- but who knew they could cause crystals to form?A team of Northwestern University researchers has discovered that X-rays can trigger the formation of a new type of crystal: charged cylindrical filaments ordered like a bundle of pencils experiencing...

Research could improve manufacture of defect-free, thin films needed to make semiconductorsThe quest for faster electronic devices recently got something more than a little bump up in technological knowhow. Scientists at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. discovered that the thin, smooth, crystalline sheets needed to make semiconductors, which are the foundation of modern computers, might be grown into smoother sheets by managing the random darting motions of the atomic particles that affect...

Two Kent State University professors are part of a team of researchers who recently uncovered a way to pack tetrahedra, considered to be the simplest shaped regular solids with its four triangular sides, more densely than ever before. Peter Palffy-Muhoray, professor of chemical physics and associate director of the Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State, and Xiaoyu Zheng, assistant professor in Kent State's Department of Mathematical Sciences, along with four colleagues at the University of...

CAMBRIDGE, England, December 10 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) is proud to announce an important milestone in the history of crystallography - the archiving of the 500,000th small molecule crystal structure to the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD). This unique, scientifically rigorous database, built over 45 years, is the international de facto standard for small-molecule chemical structures and has become an essential resource to scientists around...

In a study that elevates the role of entropy in creating order, research led by the University of Michigan shows that certain pyramid shapes can spontaneously organize into complex quasicrystals.A quasicrystal is a solid whose components exhibit long-range order, but without a single pattern or a unit cell that repeats.A paper on the findings appears in the Dec. 10 issue of Nature. Researchers from Case Western Reserve University and Kent State University collaborated on the study.Entropy is...

Engineers at the University of Leeds have developed a simple technology which can be used in existing chemical reactors to ensure "right first time" drug crystal formation.Ensuring drug crystals are formed correctly is crucial to their efficacy and the efficiency of pharmaceutical manufacturers' operations. Using self-assembled monolayers, the team has been able to show that crystals form into their desired product form with the correct shape and particle structure, without the...

European researchers obtain access to world's strongest neutron sourceA unique large-scale research device from Jülich went into operation in the USA yesterday. At the strongest neutron source in the world, the spallation source SNS in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Forschungszentrum Jülich inaugurated a so-called neutron spin echo (NSE) spectrometer. The NSE spectrometer enables detailed observations to be made of the motion of proteins and polymers. It will thus help to develop improved...

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued a new ruler, and even for an organization that routinely deals in superlatives, it sets some records. Designed to be the most accurate commercially available "meter stick" for the nano world, the new measuring tool"”a calibration standard for X-ray diffraction"”boasts uncertainties below a femtometer. That's 0.000 000 000 000 001 meter, or roughly the size of a neutron.The new ruler is in the form of a thin,...