Kinky findings drive crystal growth paradigm shift claim

US chemists say that their new results ‘refute and replace the dominant idea’ of how individual molecules come together to form crystals. Peter Vekilov from the University of Houston and colleagues provide fundamental insight into how dissolved molecules add to growth sites, called kinks, once they get there.

They provide new evidence that temporary bonds briefly hold molecules less than a nanometre away from where they permanently attach to a crystal. This determines how easily and quickly the crystals grow. ‘Our revolutionary discovery is that incorporation into kinks may occur in two steps divided by an intermediate state,’ Vekilov tells Chemistry World. If widely accepted, that would overturn the existing idea that how strongly solvents bind the molecules has the determining role in crystal growth rates.