Uploaded September 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

---

Each of the diamond-like disks is a polycrystalline aggregate of barium carbonate nanorods and silica. These "biomorphs" are held by surface tension at the solution-air interface and slowly aggregate to fractal-like structures. The movie was recorded using an optical microscope with crossed polarizers that cause the colors. For more info watch youtu.be/QGGr68VdsuM or read our paper in the Journal of Physical Chemistry pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b07212