Phys.org July 23, 2024
The formation kinetics and nanoscale three-dimensional structure of topological defects are poorly understood. An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Japan, USA – Northwestern University, Cornell University, France, Germany, Austria) described the fabrication of a pair of topological defects in the volume of a single-diamond network templated into gold from a triblock terpolymer crystal. They resolved the three-dimensional structure of nearly 70,000 individual single-diamond unit cells with a spatial resolution of 11.2 nm, allowing analysis of the long-range order of the network. The defects observed morphologically resembled the comet and trefoil patterns of equal and opposite half-integer topological charges observed in liquid crystals. Their analysis of strain in the network suggested typical hard matter behaviour. According to the researchers their approach does not require a priori knowledge of the expected positions of the nodes in three-dimensional nanostructured systems, and identifies distorted morphologies and defects in large samples… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Visualization of the topological defects inside the 3D diamond network. Credit: Nature Nanotechnology, 23 July 2024