Mesocrystal growth through oriented sliding and attachment of nanoplates
Xiaoxu Li, Tuan A. Ho, Honghu Zhang, Lili Liu, Ruipeng Li, Ping Chen, Mark E. Bowden, Sebastian T. Mergelsberg, Hongyou Fan, James J. De Yoreo, Carolyn I. Pearce, Kevin M. Rosso, Xin Zhang · 2025
Read Mesocrystal growth through oriented sliding and attachment of nanoplates by Xiaoxu Li, Tuan A. Ho, Honghu Zhang, Lili Liu, Ruipeng Li, Ping Chen, Mark E. Bowden, Sebastian T. Mergelsberg, Hongyou Fan, James J. De Yoreo, Carolyn I. Pearce, Kevin M. Rosso, Xin Zhang (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12717213.txt.
Description
Xiaoxu Li and co-authors watched crystal plates slide into order in two thousand twenty-five. Some crystals grow by snapping small pieces together. The pieces must align before they fuse. How uniform stacks form was the open puzzle. Their mineral plates settled into staggered rows. A steady sideways slide guided each plate home.
Microscopy and X-ray scattering revealed the superlattice. Liquid-cell imaging caught the sliding live. Plates slowed as overlaps grew during approach. The stagger angle stayed uniform across the crystal. Forces inside the gaps set the final registry. The pathway explains mesocrystal architecture broadly. Materials makers may steer growth by guiding slides.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Xiaoxu Li, Tuan A. Ho, Honghu Zhang, Lili Liu, Ruipeng Li, Ping Chen, Mark E. Bowden, Sebastian T. Mergelsberg, Hongyou Fan, James J. De Yoreo, Carolyn I. Pearce, Kevin M. Rosso, Xin Zhang |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 51 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |