Modifying crystal growth processes using additives is a well established approach to solving problems in many processes. Nature also makes extensive use of crystalline inorganic structures modified by soluble and insoluble organic materials. This Highlight discusses some of the recent and interesting developments in this area, with an emphasis on the control of crystal growth rates, covering bo...

To study the establishment of homochirality observed in the crystal growth experiment of chiral molecules from a solution under grinding, we extend the lattice gas model of crystal growth as follows. A lattice site can be occupied by a chiral molecule in R or S form, or can be empty. Molecules form homoclusters by nearest neighbor bonds. They change their chirality if they are isolated monomers...

We present a numerical method which computes the motion of complex solid/liquid boundaries in crystal growth. The model we solve includes physical effects such as crystalline anisotropy, surface tension, molecular kinetics and undercooling. The method is based on two ideas. First, the equations of motion are recast as a single history-dependent boundary integral equation on the solid/liquid bou...