Scientifically speaking, the term “crystal” refers to any solid that has an ordered chemical structure. This means that its parts are arranged in a precisely ordered pattern, like bricks in a wall.

A crystals expert has published an answer to how crystals are formed and how molecules become a part of them, solving an age-old mystery about crystal formation. A million years ago, the oldest known ...

Crystals—from sugar and table salt to snowflakes and diamonds—don’t always grow in a straightforward way. New York University researchers have captured this journey from amorphous blob to orderly ...

Peter Vekilov, University of Houston Frank Worley Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has published that incorporation of molecules into crystals occurs in two steps, divided by an ...

For the first time ever, researchers have watched the mesmerizing process of nanoparticles self-assembling into solid materials. In the stunning new videos, particles rain down, tumble along ...

Webb data explains how heat-formed crystal minerals end up in icy comets by tracking their journey around a young, actively forming star.

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers from Seoul National University and other international institutions have been able to answer a question that has puzzled scientists for years about ...

Mesmerizing videos offer a new look at the ways crystals form. The real-time clips, described March 30 in Nature Nanotechnology, show closeup views of microscopic gold particles tumbling, sliding and ...