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Nature 454, 174-175 (10 July 2008) | doi:10.1038/454174a; Published online 9 July 2008

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Solid-state chemistry: New order for lithium bromide

David C. Johnson1

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It's all very well predicting which forms of crystal an inorganic solid can adopt, but how can proof be obtained if these structures aren't thermodynamically stable? The answer is to build them up atom by atom.

Some might say that organic chemists have it easy. When they run a reaction, they can be reasonably confident that the product will be the one they predicted.

  1. David C. Johnson is in the Department of Chemistry and the Materials Science Institute, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403, USA.
    Email: davej@uoregon.edu