Simple trick may be the solution to making a perfect crystal

The secret to a perfect crystal may be an extra turn, according to new research.

Creating a perfect crystal sounds straightforward: Arrange identical building blocks into a repeating, orderly structure.

At the microscopic scale, though, even subtle biases in how particles interact can push them in preferred directions, making it harder to form uniform crystalline materials.

A Rice University-led study offers a way around that problem. Tanaka Tatsuya, a visiting Rice resea...