Scientists Create Crystal Möbius Strip

Image: Courtesy of Taku Tsuneta and Syujiro Mori

A signature of arts and crafts sessions, the Möbius strip–a seemingly endless ribbon with only one side and one edge that can be made from construction paper and sticky tape–has been given a new look. According to a report published today in the journal Nature, scientists have succeeded in growing crystals in the form of Möbius structures.

A piece of ribbon or paper can be twisted and turned easily, so a regular Möbius strip itself is no great feat of engineering. Crystals, in contrast, contain an inherently rigid structure. To manufacture their miniature Möbius strips, Satoshi Tanda of Hokkaido University in Japan and his colleagues placed a mixture of selenium (Se) and niobium (Nb) powder in a quartz tube and heated it to temperatures greater than 700 degrees Celsius. Under these conditions, Se changes among vapor, mist and liquid phases. The tiny drops of liquid selenium acted as spools on which the strips formed (see image). As the crystals of NbSe3 grew, they wrapped around the droplet and the two ends met, making a seamless ring the diameter of a human hair. By changing the growing conditions, the researchers coaxed the crystals into twisting either once, resulting in a Möbius strip, or twice, which created a “figure-of-eight” crystal strip.

Exactly what these mini Möbius strips could be used for is unclear. But the scientists suggest that strips of different sizes could be manufactured by varying the size of the liquid drops, and they have already applied their technique to a number of other compounds. The authors propose that these strangely shaped crystals could aid studies of the quantum mechanical effects of surface features.

Media Contact

Sarah Graham Scientific American

All latest news from the category: Life Sciences and Chemistry

Articles and reports from the Life Sciences and chemistry area deal with applied and basic research into modern biology, chemistry and human medicine.

Valuable information can be found on a range of life sciences fields including bacteriology, biochemistry, bionics, bioinformatics, biophysics, biotechnology, genetics, geobotany, human biology, marine biology, microbiology, molecular biology, cellular biology, zoology, bioinorganic chemistry, microchemistry and environmental chemistry.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors