Moreover, X-ray crystallography reveals that the crystals have one gold atom (probably within a molecule of gold thiodiglycol chloride) bound to a histidine residue of the protein.

Xie and colleagues used an aqueous solution of gold chloride and simply reduced the gold ions with ascorbic acid in the presence of a surfactant. Crystals were formed in just a few seconds.

This article was originally published with the title “ Chloride of Gold and Common Salt ” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 8 No. 31 (April 1853), p. 248 doi:10.1038 ...

Atoms that make up familiar crystals such as salt, sugar and quartz are hard to image in action. So the team turned to gold nanoparticles, each about 60 billionths of a meter across, or roughly ...

Sodium chloride is massively common in our universe, but still full of surprises. The scientists used a crystal-finding algorithm called USPEX to simulate and predict their crystals.

Bouncing X-rays off the crystals showed the scientists that they had created two new hydrates. One had a crystal structure of two sodium chloride molecules for every 17 water molecules.