Abstract
| - The morphology of β-16.16.16, β‘-10.12.10, and β‘-16.16.14 fat crystals is explained on the basis of a connectednet analysis taking into account the edge energies of a 2D nucleation growth mechanism. It is shown that theconventional prediction of the morphology on the basis of attachment energies is not capable of explainingthe very different morphologies of these fat crystals. The morphology of the three fats ranges from longneedles in spherulitic growth forms to lozenge shaped single crystals. It is shown that the elongated growthhabit of β‘-10.12.10 fat crystals having fast growing top faces is a result of a very small edge free energy of2D nuclei on these faces. The bonding topology and its high structural symmetry explain these small edgeenergies. In contrast, for the β‘-16.16.14 crystals, having a lower symmetry, the corresponding edge energiesare much higher, resulting in lozenge shaped crystals.
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