Unveiling the structure of microcrystals

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A one cubic micron sample of a microporous aluminium carboxylate. Credit: T. Loiseau CNRS 2007
A one cubic micron sample of a microporous aluminium carboxylate. Credit: T. Loiseau, CNRS 2007

Microcrystals take the form of tiny grains resembling powder, which is extremely difficult to study. For the first time, researchers from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique used X-ray diffraction at the synchrotron to determine the structure of microcrystal grains of one cubic micrometre. They gained a factor of a thousand on the size of the analysable samples, opening up new research possibilities to chemists, physicists and biologists.


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