I've always been fascinated by how materials break down, especially glasses and polymers that don't have a regular crystal ...

The article indicates that the sudden appearance (or disappearance?) of polymorphs can derail clinical programmes. Such an example occurred in the development of the anti-glioma drug temozolomide, ...

Crystals -- from sugar and table salt to snowflakes and diamonds -- don't always grow in a straightforward way. Researchers have now captured this journey from amorphous blob to orderly structures.

image: Amorphous nanosheets created using hard-to-synthesize metal oxides and oxyhydroxides view more Credit: Eisuke Yamamoto Researchers at Nagoya University in Japan have addressed a significant ...

In the literature on crystals, a ‘defect’ is any feature that breaks the regular order of the repeating crystal lattice – from sites on the crystal lattice with different chemical species swapped in, ...

This chaotic arrangement of molecules is called an “amorphous” structure. Amorphous minerals don’t technically exist Minerals, by definition, have to have a crystal structure.

The amorphous ice found on distant moons and comets can tell us about the history of our solar system and shed light on how to make new electronics. It’s also, literally, cool.

Liquid water’s crystal structure (left) compared to that of ordinary water ice (right). Graphic: University of Cambridge If you thought ice varieties got no more interesting than crushed versus ...

Amorphous ices are not found on Earth, but they could be prevalent in outer space, in comets, interstellar clouds and icy worlds like Europa, a moon of Jupiter.

Not all amorphous ices share this connection with their liquid state. If the new ice does have this link to the liquid, the ice might help scientists better understand water’s quirks.