Giant crystals invade national lab

They're big, they're heavy, they're pure potassium dihydrogen phosphate. They're some of the world's largest fast-growth crystals, created at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, Calif. In the image at right, researcher Randy Floyd poses with an imposing array of specimens. In fact, the crystal he's measuring is the largest of its ilk ever produced, grown in a mere 52 days and weighing a whopping 701 lb. Its measurements are 26 x 21 x 23 inches. The crystals have a purpose beyond looking pretty— they'll be sliced into plates and used to convert light from the giant laser at LLNL's National Ignition Facility from infrared to ultraviolet. The team of scientists who grew the crystals based their rapid-growth technique on one designed by Livermore researcher Natalia Zaitseva while she was a scientist in Russia in the late 1980s. The group, led by chemist Ruth Hawley-Fedder, immersed a thumbnailsized seed crystal inside a 6-foot-tall tank ...