Crystals -- from sugar and table salt to snowflakes and diamonds -- don't always grow in a straightforward way. Researchers have now captured this journey from amorphous blob to orderly structures. In ...

Crystals might look simple, but their growth tells a far more complex and fascinating story. From grains of salt to diamonds, crystals form when particles lock into repeating patterns. For many years, ...

In April 1982, Prof. Dan Shechtman of the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology made the discovery that would later earn him the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: the quasiperiodic crystal. According ...

Researchers have devised a mathematical approach to predict the structures of crystals -- a critical step in developing many medicines and electronic devices -- in a matter of hours using only a ...

Crystals don't always grow the way we thought. A team of researchers has just discovered a new type of crystal that shatters preconceived ideas about how they form. Scientists from New York University ...

The brilliantly shiny diamond is more than just pretty; it's one of the hardest minerals on Earth, with a name derived from the Greek word adámas, meaning unbreakable. Scientists have now engineered a ...