Hi ccp4bb community, apologies for the off-topic question but I hope someone in the community may have seen something similar before.<br><br>I&#39;m fighting to optimize some needles that don&#39;t currently diffract. After coaxing them into growth large enough to see their shape, I notice they have a funny morphology (photo linked below). Apologies for the blur, the photo is at the zoom limit of our imager; the largest central rod is around 10 um wide. These &quot;rods&quot; make me think of the WTC One building if it were to be stacked end-on-end, or alternatively, argyle socks. <br>


<br><a href="http://imgur.com/5tFun" target="_blank">http://imgur.com/5tFun</a><br><br>Anyway, so far as I understand, this type of shape is incompatible with the growth of a single crystal, and I wonder what might cause this. They do seem to have diamond-shaped facets with edges, but I can&#39;t tell if the facets are flat or have some curvature.  In similar conditions, these crystals do splinter quite a bit, and so I might guess that it is a result of some strange amalgam of 1D needles, though the pattern repeats regularly with a period of about 30 um. <br>


<br>My two questions are: <br><br>1: What might cause this? Could this just be a fluke packing of aligned needles, some effect of lattice distortions, or something else?<br><br>2: If it&#39;s known, is there anything that might be done to coax these into a better, more &quot;prismatic&quot; morphology that might diffract? I&#39;m sure the usual strategies about seeding and additives apply, but I wonder if a distorted shape like this might suggest any other avenues of attack.<br>


<br>Thanks for your time,<br><br>Shane Caldwell<br>