Oriented Attachment: From Natural Crystal Growth to a Materials Engineering Tool.

ABSTRACT: ConspectusIntuitively, chemists see crystals grow atom-by-atom or molecule-by-molecule, very much like a mason builds a wall, brick by brick. It is much more difficult to grasp that small crystals can meet each other in a liquid or at an interface, start to align their crystal lattices and then grow together to form one single crystal. In analogy, that looks more like prefab building. Yet, this is what happens in many occasions and can, with reason, be considered as an alternative mechanism of crystal growth. Oriented attachment is the process in which crystalline colloidal particles align their atomic lattices and grow together into a single crystal. Hence, two aligned crystals become one larger crystal by epitaxy of two specific facets, one of each crystal. If we simply consider the syst

SUBMITTER: Salzmann BBV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7893701 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature