Growing high-quality crystals is a bottleneck in the determination of protein structures by x-ray diffraction. Experiments find that materials with a disordered pitted surface seed the growth of protein crystals. Here we report computer simulations of rapid crystal nucleation in nanoscale pits. Nucleation is rapid, as the crystal forms in pits that have filled with liquid via capillary condensation. Surprisingly, we find that pits whose surfaces are rough are better than pits with crystalline surfaces; the roughness prevents the growing crystal from trying to conform to the pit surface and becoming strained.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 21 November 2017.
All research outputs
#12,064,104
of 33,937,515 outputs
Outputs from Physical Review Letters
#23,376
of 50,888 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#61,138
of 153,194 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Physical Review Letters
#144
of 271 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,937,515 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 38th percentile – i.e., 38% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 50,888 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.8. This one is in the 37th percentile – i.e., 37% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 271 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 20th percentile – i.e., 20% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
