For materials that exist only as a powdered crystal, solving these structures becomes much more difficult because the fragments don't carry the full 3D structure of the original crystal. "The precise ...

Every crystal's shape is a mirror of the internal arrangement of its molecules, but the molecules in photoswitchable crystals can expand, twist and change properties—from their color to their ...

(Nanowerk News) For more than 100 years, scientists have been using X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of crystalline materials such as metals, rocks, and ceramics. This technique works ...