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ALCHEMY. “Once a mesocrystal is formed, it can be transformed to a mesocrystal of another mineral system by topotactic conversion under favorable conditions. The term topotaxy (Greek; "topos" = "space" and "taxis" = "in ordered manner") describes all solid state reactions that lead to a material with crystal orientations, which are correlated with crystal orientations in the initial product.” https://lnkd.in/eNACsghr View in LinkedIn

MINIMAL ENERGY STATES. “The driving force for the geometrical alignment is the minimization of the interface mismatch energy by forming a coherent interface and reducing the exposed surface area while edge sharing is promoted by reduction of the amount of dangling unsaturated bonds along the edge, which have an inherently high chemical energy.” https://lnkd.in/eNACsghr View in LinkedIn

GEOMETRIC CONSTRAINTS. “The fourth possibility for the formation of a mesocrystal would be a simple geometric argument. When crystalline nanoparticles grow and these nanoparticles are not spherical in shape, simple entropic arguments (known from the Onsager theory of liquid crystallinity) can explain their alignment in a constrained reaction environment upon particle growth.” https://lnkd.in/eNACsghr View in LinkedIn

MINERAL BRIDGES. “An assembly of mineral bridge connected crystals is in fact also a single crystal. Thus, this concept is the most straightforward one among the mesocrystal formation mechanisms to explain the mutual crystallographic orientation of the nanocrystal.” https://lnkd.in/eNACsghr View in LinkedIn

SOLVENT ACTIONS. “Release of surface hydration water or attached surfactant molecules can yield an additional entropic driving force besides the energy gain through elimination of two high energy surfaces. This would transform the mesocrystal into a single crystal.” https://lnkd.in/eNACsghr View in LinkedIn

INTRAMOLECULAR FORCES. “Beside physical fields with longer range, there are also forces upon particle contact. Already two identical crystal faces can orient each other when brought in close contact, as was observed in the process of oriented aggregation. The principal attractive force between two objects is the van der Waals attraction, which can lead to aggregation of particles.” https://lnkd.in/eNACsghr View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE this weekend continues from last weekend and concludes on Sunday on the theme of mesocrystals in biomaterials. Both mesocrystals and biominerals are outliers in their unusual physical properties, and chemists have been trying to understand biomineralization in order to advance biomimicry chemistry to create advanced materials with enhanced properties. https://lnkd.in/eNACsghr View in LinkedIn

The inchplant, tradescantia zebrina, has irridescent purple leaf undersides that shine through the upper leaf. Truly magnificent. View in LinkedIn

EMERGENT PROPERTIES. “Mesocrystals from functional materials are highly attractive due to the emergent properties of mesocrystalline materials, such as single crystal-like behavior, high crystallinity, high porosity and inner connection bridged by organic components and/or inorganic nanocrystals. Such property combinations in a single material are unrivalled compared to amorphous, polycrystalline, and single-crystalline materials.” https://lnkd.in/eNACsghr View in LinkedIn

ARTIFICIAL LINE. “There is no such thing as life! There are interesting chemical reactions, like Stephen Hawking, and less interesting chemical reactions like salt crystals...There is no line, no ‘breath of life’ separating living from nonliving. That is a metaphysical bit of silliness. We should focus on interesting over boring chemical reactions and forget about this line that does not exist except in our own minds.” (The famous quantum physicist, Jonathan P. Dowling (2013), Page 430). https://lnkd.in/eWbBjM7i View in LinkedIn