Scientists at Lehigh University, in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have demonstrated the fabrication of what they call a new class of crystalline solid by using a laser heating technique that induces atoms to organize into a rotating lattice without affecting the macroscopic shape of the solid.
By controlling the rotation of the crystalline lattice, the researchers say they will be able to make a new type of synthetic single crystals and "bio-inspired" materials that mimic the structure of special biominerals and their superior electronic and optical properties as well.
The group reported its findings today (Nov. 3) in Scientific Reports, a Nature journal, in an article titled "Rotating lattice single crystal architecture on the surface of glass." The paper's lead author is Dmytro Savytskii, a research scientist in the department of materials science and engineering at Lehigh.
The other authors are Volkmar Dierolf, distinguished professor and chair of the department of physics at Lehigh; Himanshu Jain, the T.L. Diamond Distinguished Chair in Engineering and Applied Science and professor of materials science and engineering at Lehigh; and Nobumichi Tamura of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Berkeley, California.
The development of the rotating lattice single (RLS) crystals follows a discovery reported in March in Scientific Reports in which the Lehigh group demonstrated for the first time that a single crystal could be grown from glass without melting the glass.
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