In my reading up on silicate crystals, I stumbled upon this…

Aren’t these just beautiful? These tiny trees are only a couple of microns tall. They’re made from silicon carbide (one of the toughest substances known) and were grown on a wafer of silicon.

They’re made by chemical vapour deposition. In other words, they condense straight from gas into these crystalline forms — not unlike the way snowflakes form. Amazingly, the growth of these tiny structures can actually be controlled by varying the temperature and pressure of the chemical vapour.

They were made by Ghim Wei Ho, now an assistant professor at the University of Singapore. When she was studying her PhD at Cambridge, it seems she made quite a few other little nanostructures.

Fascinating…