Topic Review
Ferroelastic Twinning in Minerals
Ferroelastic twinning in minerals is a very common phenomenon. The twin laws follow simple symmetry rules and they are observed in minerals, like feldspar, palmierite, leucite, perovskite, and so forth. The major discovery over the last two decades was that the thin areas between the twins yield characteristic physical and chemical properties, but not the twins themselves. Research greatly focusses on these twin walls (or ‘twin boundaries’); therefore, because they possess different crystal structures and generate a large variety of ‘emerging’ properties. Research on wall properties has largely overshadowed research on twin domains. 
  • 1.2K
  • 15 Jun 2021
Topic Review
Germanium Ion Implantation and Annealing
Germanium (Ge) ion implantation into silicon waveguides will induce lattice defects in the silicon, which can eventually change the crystal silicon into amorphous silicon and increase the refractive index from 3.48 to 3.96. A subsequent annealing process, either by using an external laser or integrated thermal heaters can partially or completely remove those lattice defects and gradually change the amorphous silicon back into the crystalline form and, therefore, reduce the material’s refractive index.  In addition, Ge ion implantation and annealing are also demonstrated to enable post-fabrication trimming of ring resonators and Mach–Zehnder interferometers and to implement nonvolatile programmable photonic circuits. 
  • 1.3K
  • 01 Mar 2022
Topic Review
High Pressure Macromolecular Crystallography
Since its introduction in the early 1970s, high pressure crystallography (HPX) has shown great potential for the investigation of different types of matter. Using diamond anvil cells, HPX is an emerging technique that has been rapidly implemented, making it available to biologists, and there is immense potential for utilizing this technique in biological systems in the future. At the molecular level, high-pressure crystallographic investigation provides information on structural characteristics that not only determine the native conformation of a protein but also the conformations with higher free-energy, thus revealing function-related structural changes and properties that can be modified as a result of pressurization. The increase in the number of crystal structures of different macromolecules determined under high pressure over the last five decades can be ascribed mainly to two factors: the emergence of high-pressure cells with very large, open angles, and the advent of third generation synchrotron sources. The use of high pressure crystallography as a research tool has been shown to contribute to the advancements in the basic fields of biochemistry (protein misfolding and aggregation), biophysics (protein stability), and biotechnology (food processing).
  • 1.6K
  • 04 Apr 2023
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Homogenization Methods of Lattice Materials
The existing methods for analyzing the behaviors of lattice materials require high computational power. The homogenization method is the alternative way to overcome this issue. Homogenization is an analysis to understand the behavior of an area of lattice material from a small portion for rapid analysis and precise approximation. This paper provides a summary of some representative methodologies in homogenization.
  • 648
  • 06 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Inhibitor-Enzyme Complexes for New Anti-TB Agents
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), is the most devastating human pathogen, as confirmed by the latest TB Report published in October.
  • 393
  • 23 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Lead-Free Perovskite Single Crystals
Lead-free perovskites have received remarkable attention because of their nontoxicity, low-cost fabrication, and spectacular properties including controlled bandgap, long diffusion length of charge carrier, large absorption coefficient, and high photoluminescence quantum yield. Compared with the widely investigated polycrystals, single crystals have advantages of lower trap densities, longer diffusion length of carrier, and extended absorption spectrum due to the lack of grain boundaries, which facilitates their potential in different fields including photodetectors, solar cells, X-ray detectors, light-emitting diodes, and so on. 
  • 629
  • 30 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Liquid Crystalline Materials Based on Copper(I) Complexes
This paper provides insight into the various studies that have already been carried out on liquid crystalline materials based on copper(I) complexes. Even though the study of copper(I) complexes with respect to their liquid crystalline property is quite few, metallomesogens prepared with different structural components and ligands from groups such as aza macrocycles, alkyl thiolates, ethers, isocyanides, phenanthroline, Schiff bases, pyrazoles, phosphine, biquinoline, and benzoyl thiourea have been reported. A special section is dedicated to the discussion of the emission properties of copper(I) metallomesogens.
  • 402
  • 28 Jul 2023
Topic Review
Mechanical Milling
Mechanical milling (MM) has attracted great attention as a powerful tool for the synthesis of a variety of sophisticated materials, including equilibrium, nonequilibrium (e.g., amorphous, quasicrystals, nanodiamonds, carbon nanotubes, nanocrystalline powders), and nanocomposite materials. The MM is a unique process in that it involves a solid-state interaction between the reactant materials’ fresh powder surfaces at room temperature. As a result, it has been used to fabricate alloys and compounds that are difficult or impossible to acquire using standard melting and casting processes.
  • 2.1K
  • 20 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Methods for Protein Crystallization
Proteins are biopolymers consisting of amino acids linked by peptide bonds. A peptide bond is a type of amide bond that occurs during the formation of proteins and peptides as a result of the interaction of the α-amino group (-NH2) of one amino acid with the α-carboxyl group (-COOH) of another amino acid. The main method for determining the spatial structure of a protein is X-ray structural analysis of protein crystals. The main difficulty in applying this method is in obtaining a perfect protein-crystal. 
  • 595
  • 28 Jan 2023
Topic Review
Modification Strategies of Pristine Graphitic Carbon Nitride
Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4), as the significant metal-free semiconductor photocatalyst, holds great potential in the application of the photocatalytic nitrogen oxides (NOx) removal process due to its plentiful extraordinary advantages, such as visible light response properties, mild bandgap, low cost, facile preparation and high thermal stability. However, pristine g-C3N4 prepared using the traditional high-temperature solid reaction suffers from low specific surface areas and low crystallinity owing to kinetic hindrance, which results in small specific surface areas, few reactive sites, limited light-harvesting capacity, rapid recombination of photogenerated charge carriers and unsatisfactory photocatalytic NOx removal performance. In order to improve the photocatalytic performance of pristine g-C3N4, a variety of modification strategies have been developed including metal doping, non-metal doping, defect engineering, crystallinity optimization, morphology controlling and heterojunction construction.
  • 609
  • 06 Feb 2023
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