Tiny crystal vases

Nanowerk  August 13, 2022 Skeletal or concave polyhedral crystals appear in a variety of synthetic processes and natural environments. However, their morphology, size, and orientation are difficult to control because of their highly kinetic growth character. Researchers in Japan have developed a new method to produce micrometer-scale single crystals in the form of hollow vessels. Upon drop-casting of a heated ethanol solution onto a quartz substrate, the molecules spontaneously assembled into standing vessel-shaped single crystals uniaxially and synchronously over the wide area of the substrate, with small size polydispersity. The crystal edge was active even after consumption of the molecules […]

Researchers design a light-trapping, color-converting crystal

Phys.org  August 7, 2019 Existing photonic crystal cavities usually only confine one wavelength of light and their structures are highly customized to accommodate that one wavelength. To force the coexistence of the two laser beams using a photonic crystal cavity, an international team of researchers (USA -Stanford University, Italy) devised a structure that combines two different ways to confine light, one to hold onto the infrared light and another to hold the green, all still contained within one tiny crystal. After ironing out the details of their two-part structure, the researchers produced a list of four conditions, which should guide […]