Accelerating single-crystal growth by stimulated and self-guided channeling

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel self-guided and stimulated method for accelerating single-crystal growth in aqueous solutions, resulting in unique morphologies and enhanced mechanical properties, with potential applications in quantum, biomedical, and pharmaceutical fields.

Contribution

It presents a new self-channeling-stimulated growth theory and molecular dynamics analysis explaining unidirectional crystal growth and lateral growth suppression.

Findings

Achieved extraordinarily fast unidirectional crystal growth

Observed novel crystal morphologies with complete lateral growth suppression

Demonstrated mechanical flexibility of the crystals

Abstract

We report a self-guided and "stimulated" single-crystal growth acceleration effect in static super-saturated aqueous solutions, producing inorganic (KH$_2$PO$_4$) and organic (tetraphenyl-phosphonium-family) nonlinear optical single-crystals with novel morphologies. The extraordinarily fast unidirectional growth in the presence of complete lateral growth suppression defies all current impurity, defect and dislocation based crystal growth inhibition mechanisms. We propose a self-channeling-stimulated accelerated growth theory that can satisfactorily explain all experimental results. Using molecular dynamics analysis and a modified two-component crystal growth model that includes microscopic surface molecular selectivity we show the lateral growth arrest is the combined result of the self-channeling and a self-shielding effect. These single-crystals exhibit remarkable mechanical flexibility in winding and twisting, demonstrating their unique advantages for chip-size quantum and biomedical applications, as well as for production of high-yield/high-potency pharmaceutical materials.