Crystal Morphology

MetaMorph

Prediction and Visualisation of Crystal Morphologies

Crystal morphology and crystal growth are vital for materials processing and handling. Determining the shape which a crystal prefers, and gaining understanding of how to change the shape, can be crucial to materials scientists and engineers.

MetaMorph is designed to predict, display and manipulate crystal morphologies. It uses surface energies - for example, those produced by OxMat's Crysalis - together with information on the crystallographic unit cell, to calculate the equilibrium crystal morphology. MetaMorph uses Wulff's Theorem which relates the predominance of each surface to its energy, with the lowest-energy surfaces having the largest areas.

Alternatively, if surface energies are not available, the Donnay-Harker morphologies can be generated simply from the crystal structure. The Donnay-Harker theory needs only the interplanar spacings for different Miller indices.

With MetaMorph's intuitive Graphical User Interface, you can:

• display morphology based on specified surface energies
• calculate and view the Donnay-Harker morphology
• interactively adjust surface energies and consequently the morphology

These resources allow you to:

• predict morphologies for crystals
• compare calculated and experimental morphologies
• determine relative surface energies or unit cell dimensions from experimental morphologies
• relate surface energies to morphology to understand how changing process conditions will affect both.

MetaMorph can display crystal morphologies in wireframe or solid form, can label the surfaces with their Miller Indices and the crystal can be rotated or spun with the mouse. The picture can be saved in the vector EPS format, and a report containing information such as facet areas and edge lengths can also be generated.

MetaMorph is available for Win 9x, Win NT, Win 2000 and Win XP. More detailed information on MetaMorph is available from Intelligensys.

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