International Year of Crystallography

An editorial in Nature Materials highlights work by SFI External Professor James Crutchfield and his colleague Dowman Varn for their information-theoretic measure of material structure. Their algorithmic approach, described in an SFI working paper, aims to provide a framework for classifying “anything from perfect crystals to totally amorphous materials,” according to the editorial. 

Quantifying material order and disorder is especially relevant for materials science in 2014, which is the International Year of Crystallography.

Read the News and Views editorial in Nature Materials (November, 2014, subscription required)

Read the SFI working paper (September 19, 2014)

Visit the website of the International Year of Crystallography