A strong laser can heat a metal’s electrons long before its atoms have time to warm. During that brief period, the hot electrons may push the metal into a different solid crystal arrangement.

Molecular crystals—the building blocks that make up many drugs and other products—sometimes take on water molecules, which can alter the crystals in unforeseen ways. Notably, predicting which crystals ...

Researchers at New York University have devised a mathematical approach to predict the structures of crystals—a critical step in developing many medicines and electronic devices—in a matter of hours ...

The term crystal in this context does not necessarily refer to a traditional crystalline solid like salt or diamond, but rather to any material with a highly ordered, repeating structure at the ...

This image by Shaista Hassan Lone, a scientist at the University of Kashmir, shows two polymorphs—different crystal structures—of 4-(dimethylamino)benzaldehyde. When Lone initially set out to grow ...

Duplicates of crystal structures are flooding databases, implicating repositories hosting organic, inorganic, and computer-generated crystals. The issue raises questions about curation practices at ...