Abstract
ETCHING is one of the most useful ways of directly observing dislocations in a crystal1. Many studies have been made of dislocations in organic crystals, such as aromatic hydrocarbons2, but no reports on the dislocations in fatty acid crystals have been published because no large single crystal could be obtained. Recently we have succeeded in obtaining large single crystals of the saturated fatty acid stearic acid from solutions of organic solvents3. We describe here attempts to etch single stearic acid crystals using organic solvents. Optical and transmission electron micrographs of etch pits reveal several novel features and give an apparent correlation between the pits and the dislocations in stearic acid crystals.
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References
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SATO, K., OKADA, M. Etching on large single crystals of stearic acid. Nature 269, 399–400 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1038/269399a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/269399a0
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