Scientists discover crystals may also be bent

Thinking that the crystal could not be bent and had the ability to be flexible, it turned out that we were wrong.

Listening to crystals is hard, but researchers have shown that anything in this world can happen. Tests show that crystals can be so flexible that they bend constantly , even tying them into knots. This result completely changes our perception with the structure, even the definition of crystals.

Crystals can be so flexible that they bend constantly.

As we learned in class, crystals are fragile and inelastic. But the new study shows that crystals could be bent, opening a door to a new material, potentially revolutionizing electronics and technology.

Previously, researchers had observed that crystals could be bent but for the first time, they approached it at the atomic level, and determined exactly that the crystal was both flexible and still keep its inherent characteristics.

"We work with crystals a lot - they are often made up of small, hard and fragile clusters, when bent or impacted, they will crack or break ," one of the houses. The study, John McMurtrie from Queensland University of Technology in Australia said.

'Although there have been observations in the past that crystals can be bent, this is the first study to clearly analyze this phenomenon. We found that the essence of crystals is not only hard, but also as soft as nylon '.

Here is such a flexible crystal:

Crystals made up of molecules are arranged in a cyclic structure.

Crunchy, fragile crystals are due to their structure, which is the same - crystals formed by molecules arranged in a periodic structure, also known as an extended order structure . That means that from every angle, crystals have the same shape. This is a double-edged sword: they are hard enough to be applied to a multitude of modern technologies, from making phones to computers; they are too hard to apply to emerging technologies, for example, electronics manufacturing can be bent.

But fresh up on you, because this new study shows that scientists can create elastic crystals, bend many times and still be able to return to their original state. Their first success was a thin crystal fiber with 5cm long lines. Flexible, elastic, able to tie, but still as hard as crystal - This will be a new material of the future.

Scientists can create elastic crystals, bend many times and still be able to return to their original state.

They created this plastic crystal with a simple metal compound, copper (II) acetylacetonate . The metal was first created in the late 1800s and at that time, it also changed our view of how molecules are arranged in crystals, making it flexible. By using X-rays, the research team studied the structure of the crystal when bent, seeing that each individual molecule could rotate on its own, thus creating elasticity.

After observing how this plastic crystal works, the team found six other metal compounds that have a similar structure to copper (II) acetylacetonate.

After proving that it exists, determining how it works, now we have to see how this flexibility, flexibility affects the definition of the current 'crystal' - can we justify it? announced a completely new material. And yet, we can also conveniently apply this plastic crystal to future technologies.

'A flexible crystal like what we have here can pave the way for a new material with a multitude of applications, from manufacturing aircraft components to spacecraft, from sensors of sensors. turn to electronics in general ' , Jack Clegg, who led the research team at the University of Queensland confidently said.