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Muhammad Abbas found these stunning flower-like crystals when he looked at a sample of a terbium metal-organic framework (MOF) under a microscope. For new MOFs, like the one Abbas synthesized here, a typical first step involves growing high-quality crystals, key to solving their structure using X-ray diffraction analysis. Typically, these crystals grow in regular polyhedral shapes, such as cubes or dodecahedrons, but sometimes a few crystals may show irregular morphologies. However, it’s rare to see almost a whole batch of crystals grow in structures so similar and attractive as these flowers, each about 5 mm across. Abbas is exploring rare-earth MOFs for environmental applications. The goal for this project is to develop MOFs that can fluoresce when they detect pollutants in water.
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