.png)
Physicists have discovered a remarkable new class of materials made out of spinning particles with strange, realistic characteristics. These "rotating crystals" are materials composed of several particles that interact with one another sideways rather than head-on, twisting instead of stretching, breaking while in motion, and even coming back together to form cohesive wholes. The group of researchers from Wayne State University (Detroit, USA) and Aachen, Düsseldorf, and Mainz (Germany) provide a thorough theoretical approach to forecast unique properties of systems such as these, which are referred to as transverse--interaction systems.
Solids that twist, break, and rebuild themselves are known as "rotating crystals"
According to Science Daily, these crystals can show controlled structural flaws and are prone to cleaving readily into individual pieces and impurity grain boundaries. They investigated how many spinning building pieces can combine and produce qualitatively novel and unexpected behavior using a multiscale theoretical model.
Uncovering the New Physics of Odd Elasticity and Transverse Interactions
Pulling a solid in ordinary matter results in stretching in the direction of the pull. Conversely, a peculiar elastic substance can twist under strain instead of stretching normally. The solid breaks into several smaller crystallites when the rotating construction pieces brush against one another with enough force.
Additionally, they found that although tiny crystals grow to a critical size, big crystals dominated by the transverse interaction tend to split into smaller spinning crystals. In contrast, typical crystal formation is characterized by steady growth under favorable circumstances.
Such crystals may have their defect formation regulated from the outside, allowing for fine crystal property tuning with an eye toward applications in fields as diverse as biology and colloid science.
#science #newstainmentora
