Mucic acid crystals grown from a water-based solution achieved a record-breaking stiffness for an organic crystal.

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Remember that old high school chemistry experiment where salt crystals precipitate out of a saltwater solution—or maybe the one where rock candy crystals form from sugar water? It turns out that your ...

Crystals made from mucic acid are the stiffest organic crystals reported to date. 1 They owe their rigidity to a dense web of hydrogen bonding between their molecules, giving them mechanical ...

The literature said that the phenylsulfonamide that Keldy Mason was going to use to initiate a polymerization reaction was supposed to be a white solid. But the substance he had was a thick oil–that ...

A recent theory challenges conventional understanding of crystallization. It shows that the dominant element in a solution—the solvent, not the solute—is the material that crystallizes. This finding, ...

Applying simple, ancient weaving techniques to newly recognized properties of organic crystals, researchers with the Smart Materials Lab (SML) and the Center for Smart Engineering Materials (CSEM) at ...