An algorithm designed to seek out essentially the most environment friendly path from atom to atom in a weird type of crystal seems to supply extremely intricate mazes. In addition to making mazes, the method might assist pace up sure industrial chemical reactions.

The crystals in query are referred to as quasicrystals as a result of, whereas their atoms are organized in repeating kinds like an extraordinary crystal, they show extra advanced and unpredictable types of symmetry. Such crystals have been synthesised within the laboratory and had been even created by the primary detonation of a nuclear weapon in 1945, however just one pure supply has ever been discovered: a meteorite found in Russia in 1985.

“Quasicrystals have all these symmetries that couldn’t presumably exist in [normal] crystals, which is type of a captivating factor,” says Felix Flicker on the College of Bristol, UK. “It’s this very stunning space of maths, however one the place individuals can type of recognize the fantastic thing about it type of immediately, with out essentially needing to know the main points.”

Flicker and his colleagues have developed an algorithm to rapidly create a route that touches each atom in a quasicrystal as soon as, and solely as soon as. The diagrams of those routes kind stunning maze-like buildings.

Creating such a route is what’s referred to as an NP-complete drawback in laptop science, one which turns into exponentially extra advanced because the variety of atoms will increase. These issues can rapidly change into nearly not possible to calculate at massive scales, however the researchers discovered that for some quasicrystals the issue is unexpectedly easy.

“That was very shocking as a result of that drawback usually is understood to be primarily not possible to unravel, and there didn’t appear to be any apparent simplification offered by these quasi crystals as a result of they don’t have translational symmetries,” says Flicker.”

Flicker says that with the ability to develop such a route might have sensible purposes in a lab technique referred to as scanning tunnelling microscopy, the place an ultra-sharp tip is steered over a cloth to sense atoms one after the other and construct up a picture on the atomic degree. Some advanced photos, reminiscent of these of quasicrystals themselves, can take as much as a month to create; but when a extra environment friendly route that takes in every atom may be discovered then this could possibly be lower in half, says Flicker.

He additionally believes that it could possibly be used to create crystalline catalysts for industrial chemical processes which are extra environment friendly than present strategies, and subsequently pace up or scale back the prices of creating sure compounds. However Flicker thinks different makes use of might change into obvious over time: “We’re hoping essentially the most fascinating purposes are issues that we haven’t considered.”