At the heart of clouds are ice crystals. And at the heart of ice crystals, often, are aerosol particles - dust in the atmosphere onto which ice can form more easily than in the open air.
Rigaku has taken a pioneering role in establishing an online crystallography school delivered via Zoom.
Alchemy, which attempted to turn cheap metals such as lead and copper into gold, has not yet succeeded. However, with the development of alloys in which two or three auxiliary elements are mixed with the best elements of the times, modern alchemy can produce high-tech metal materials with high strength, such as high entropy alloys.
Ice is an extremely multipurpose material. The oxygen atoms in ice cubes or snowflakes are arranged in a hexagonal pattern. An ice form like this is referred to as ice one (ice I).
When materials reach extremely small size scales, strange things begin to happen. One of those phenomena is the formation of mesocrystals.
A team at the University of Colorado Boulder has designed new kinds of liquid crystals that mirror the complex structures of some solid crystals--a major step forward in building flowing materials that can match the colorful diversity of forms seen in minerals and gems, from lazulite to topaz.
Science always strives to replace complex natural objects and phenomena with simpler models. Scientists of Samara Center for Theoretical Materials Science (SCTMS) of Samara Polytech have developed methods to simplify the crystal structure of a substance to obtain chemically important knowledge. The main approaches are described in the article published in the Structural Chemistry journal IF 2.081 (doi:10.1007/s11224-020-01724-4).
Headed by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), a research team has designed a novel material that can flex and bend 40 times more than its competitors when an electric current is applied on it, paving the way to more improved micro machines.
The imminent environmental crisis can be prevented if people find sustainable and efficient means to avoid wastage.
New dibenzophenazine-based liquid crystals synthesized and studied by a professor from RUDN University together with his Indian collaborators could be utilized in solar panels and optoelectronics.