Perfect Crystals Grown by Cancelling Out Gravity on Earth

willatnewscientist writes "Researchers in the Netherlands and Japan have found a way to grow perfect crystals in 'zero gravity' here on Earth. By exploiting the way a powerful magnet influences diamagnetic materials they have been able to grow protein crystals without the defects normally introduced as a result of gravity (The same trick has been used to levitate a frog before). Normally, such crystals are grown in space, such as aboard the International Space Station."

Comments

One big problem.

[jd]

It won't work for all types of crystal, only those with specific magnetic properties. Proteins are fine, but semiconductors - where defects in the tens of nanometers are highly significant - won't be growable this way. Of course, there's nothing to stop you launching a vaccuum flask-like container into space and have crystals grow in true microgravity conditions at a very very slow pace. Sadly, there isn't a market for million-dollar CPU cores.

On the protein side, this will be interesting, though. As the article states, growing highly precise protein structures is a Big Deal and very very hard. The potential benefits to the medical industry are hard to predict, but will be significant. This isn't merely a fun exercise, this could have some very substantial benefits. Not sure if it could be used to amplify prions, but if it could, that would make studying the B**** so much easier.

Re:Cost?

[MrMr]

It will cost the space program a lot of support.
There goes the 'we can make much better crystals of proteins in zero-G' sales pitch (Anyone dare to guess how many http://www.pdb.org/PDB entries are space-crystals and how much better they are than the flatland versions?)