Quinones are widely found in nature, used in chemistry and medicine, and are just beginning to gain importance in materials engineering. In order to harvest their potential as an ordered or highly crystalline solid, their crystal formation processes need to be well investigated and controlled. We chose 1,4-anthraquinone, a commercially available type of quinone, as a model compound to study its...

Cholesterol monohydrate crystal formation was studied in supersaturated model bile solutions, containing unlabeled cholesterol, sodium cholate and soybean phosphatidylcholine, and tracer amounts of [3H]cholesterol. Solutions were either seeded with cholesterol crystals to initiate growth, or not seeded to allow self-nucleation and subsequent crystal growth to occur. Crystal growth at 37 degrees...

The industrial production of crystals started with A. Verneuil with his flamefusion growth method 1902. He can be regarded as the father of crystal growth technology as his principles of nucleation control and crystal-diameter control are adapted in most later growth methods from the melt, like Tammann, Stöber, Bridgman, Czochralski, Kyropoulos, Stockbarger, etc. The important crystal pulling f...

A mechanism for crystal-crystal phase transformations (PTs) via surface-induced virtual premelting is justified thermodynamically and confirmed experimentally for the PTs in PbTiO3 nanofibers. When the thickness of the surface melt (which appears much below the melting temperature, especially for nanoobjects) exceeds the size of the critical product nucleus, nucleation and growth of the product...