Using a solution of tiny plastic spheres 50 times smaller than a human hair, scientists at Cornell University discovered the thin, smooth crystalline sheets needed to make semiconductors can be grown more smoothly by managing the random darting motions of the atomic particles that affect how the crystals grow. Researchers reproduced the conditions that lead to crystallization on the atomic scale by using particles much bigger than atoms, but still small enough that they behave like atoms to watch how particles crystallize. Additionally, with special laser beams known as "optical tweezers," researchers placed an individual particle (atom) on top of a growing crystal island and determined how easy it was for the particle to hop off that island. They found the random darting motions of a particle are a key factor that determines how long it spends on the island. When particles can hop off islands more easily, smooth crystals can be grown. Here a colloidal crystal freezes onto a square lattice template. The video is sped up by a factor of about 20.

Credit: John Savage, Rajesh Ganapathy, and Itai Cohen

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