{
  "id": 15831405,
  "title": "Controlled vapor treatment guides molecules into highly oriented soft quasicrystals",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/21/controlled-vapor-treatment-guides-molecules-into-highly-oriented-soft",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-10-21T01:40:01.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Phys.org",
    "slug": "phys-org",
    "url": "https://phys.org/news/2026-10-vapor-treatment-molecules-highly-soft.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Researchers at National Taiwan University have discovered a method to control the self-assembly of molecules into highly oriented soft quasicrystals using a technique called vapor-induced self-assembly (VISA). Soft quasicrystals exhibit complex, non-repeating patterns, but forming them with uniform orientation over large areas has been difficult. By manipulating temperature and molecular interactions, the researchers found that the same molecules can undergo different assembly pathways, leading to various ordered structures. They developed VISA to navigate the challenging pathway that results in highly oriented quasicrystals while suppressing competing orientations. By carefully controlling vapor treatment and cooling, they successfully formed a quasicrystal with a uniform 12-fold pattern extending over millimeter-scale regions. This breakthrough demonstrates that controlling molecular assembly, rather than just the structures formed, can lead to the creation of complex materials with large-scale structural order.",
  "summary": "Molecules can spontaneously organize into complex, ordered structures through a process known as self-assembly. Among these structures, soft quasicrystals display unusual patterns that do not repeat regularly like conventional crystals. However, producing such structures with a uniform orientation over large areas remains a major challenge.",
  "key_points": [
    "Researchers at National Taiwan University develop vapor-induced self-assembly (VISA) technique.",
    "VISA controls molecular self-assembly into highly oriented soft quasicrystals.",
    "Uniform 12-fold pattern formed over millimeter-scale regions through vapor treatment and cooling."
  ],
  "editors_take": "Mastering the assembly pathway through vapor treatment enables the creation of complex materials with large-scale structural order, overcoming previous difficulties in achieving uniform orientation in soft quasicrystals.",
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}