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Letter

Nature Materials 4, 152–155 (1 February 2005) | doi:10.1038/nmat1294

Novel chain structures in group VI elements

Olga Degtyareva , Eugene Gregoryanz , Maddury Somayazulu , Przemyslaw Dera , Ho-kwang Mao & Russell J. Hemley

Recent developments in high-pressure methods and advances in X-ray crystallography have led to a new level of understanding of phase diagrams and structures of materials under pressure. Recently discovered phenomena such as complex phases of alkali metals, incommensurate host–guest structures, and incommensurately modulated structures have rendered obsolete our conventional wisdom about the range of structures possible in the elements.