Researchers of Hungary's HUN-REN Wigner research center have been awarded the Gregori Aminoff Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for developing a new method for crystal structure determination, the HUN-REN research network said on Monday.
According to HUN-REN's website, the technique developed by Miklós Tegze, Gábor Bortel and Gyula Faigel at the Wigner Research Center for Physics makes it possible to determine the three-dimensional atomic structure of a crystal using a single, extremely short X-ray pulse. The method could also open up new possibilities for studying rapid structural changes.
Crystallography examines how atoms are arranged in solid materials, and understanding atomic structures is essential for grasping material properties. The method, called Kossel crystallography, eliminates the need to rotate the crystal in the conventional way: a single X-ray free-electron laser pulse lasting around 25 femtoseconds can provide sufficient information to determine the complete three-dimensional atomic structure, HUN-REN said.
The researchers demonstrated the method using single crystals of gallium arsenide and gallium phosphide at the European XFEL facility. Their results were published in Nature Communications in 2024.
The significance of the technique also lies in its potential to enable the study of extremely rapid, short-lived structural transformations that would be difficult to track using conventional methods.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Gregori Aminoff Prize since 1979 in recognition of outstanding scientific achievements in crystallography.
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