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Nobel Win For Crystal Discovery
By Jennifer Carpenter
Science reporter, BBC News
BBC NEWS, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
October 5, 2011: The Nobel Prize for chemistry has gone to a single researcher for his discovery of the structure of quasi-crystals. The new structural form was previously thought to be impossible and provoked controversy. Daniel Shechtman, from Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, will receive the entire 10m Swedish krona (£940,000) prize. The Nobel Prize in chemistry caps this year's science awards.
Professor David Phillips, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, called quasi-crystals "quite beautiful". He added: "Quasi-crystals are a fascinating aspect of chemical and material science - crystals that break all the rules of being a crystal at all."
The Nobel laureate has first created quasi-crystals rapidly cooling molten metals such as aluminum and manganese squirting the mixture onto a cool surface. By sending an electron wave through a molten metal "grate", the Israeli researcher was able to see how the metals’ atoms diffracted the wave.
Under the microscope he observed that the new crystal was made up of perfectly ordered, but never repeating, units - a structure that is at odds with all other crystals that are regular and precisely repeating. Dr Shechtman himself is said to have cried "Eyn chaya kazo", which translates from the Hebrew as "there can be no such creature".
Following Dr Shechtman's discovery, scientists have formed other kinds of quasi-crystals in the lab, and a naturally forming example has been found among mineral samples from a Russian river. They are also found in the world's most durable steel, used in razor blades and ultra-fine needles in eye surgery.
Quasi-crystal structures tend to be hard, non-sticky and are poor conductors of heat and electricity. These properties make them useful as coatings for frying pans and as insulating material for electrical wires.
"It's a great work of discovery, with potential applications that range from light-emitting diodes to improved diesel engines," said the president of the American Chemical Society, Nancy Jackson.
Dr Andrew Goodwin, from the department of chemistry at Oxford University, added: "Shechtman's quasi-crystals are now widely used to improve the mechanical properties of engineering materials and are the basis of an entirely new branch of structural science.
