Stegner deals with the dual threads of the novel with aplomb and produces a thoughtful, crystalline book.
One approach has been to dope it with compounds like silicon carbide or boron nitride that have matching crystalline lattice structures.
This means there is a world of difference between it and a three-dimensional crystalline structure like graphite.
Both the crystalline and the amorphous phases of this substance are stable at any temperature a device is likely to experience, and thin films of it are more or less transparent.
They are also being considered for use in memory chips, because the switch between amorphous and crystalline states alters their electrical properties in ways that can store electronic bits of data.
For all the crystalline brilliance of his writing, Orwell's political analysis was flawed.
The imported product is crystalline, purer than the local powder, and more expensive: between $100 and $120 a gram, according to Dave Dewey, a local drug cop.
China has now captured more than half the world market for the most widely used solar panels, which rely on photovoltaic cells made from crystalline silicon.
So Rolltronics has formed a partnership with ITFT to concentrate on the two remaining pieces of the puzzle: logic circuitry and storage.Making flexible circuitry is difficult because logic circuits are traditionally made of transistors etched into a crystalline silicon wafer, which is rigid.
The company has licensed several patents from America's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where a team led by Paul Carey devised a clever way to turn amorphous silicon into the crystalline kind without high temperatures.
Since it lacks these defects, metallic glass can support much greater loads without deformation, and is therefore much stronger than its crystalline counterpart.Todd Hufnagel of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland is working with the American army to make a metallic-glass alloy for use in armour-piercing projectiles.
