We haven’t seen [Les Wright] in a while, and with the release of his new video, we know why — he’s been busy growing crystals.
Now, that might seem confusing to anyone who has done the classic “Crystal Garden” trick with table salt and laundry bluing, or tried to get a bit of rock candy out of a supersaturated sugar solution. Sure, growing crystals takes time, but it’s not exactly hard work. But [Les] isn’t in the market for any old crystals. Rather, he needs super-sized, optically clear crystals of potassium dihydrogen phosphate, or KDP, which are useful as frequency doublers for lasers. [Les] has detailed his need for KDP crystals before and even grown some nice ones, but he wanted to step up his game and grow some real whoppers.
And boy, did he ever. Fair warning; the video below is long and has a lot of detail on crystal-growing theory, but it’s well worth it for anyone taking the plunge. [Les] ended up building an automated crystal lab, housing it in an old server enclosure for temperature and dust control. The crystals are grown on a custom-built armature that slowly rotates in a supersaturated solution of KDP which is carefully transitioned through a specific temperature profile under Arduino control. As a bonus, he programmed the rig to take photographs of the growing crystals at intervals; the resulting time-lapse sequences are as gorgeous as the crystals, one of which grew to 40 grams in only a week.
We’re keen to see how [Les] puts these crystals to work, and to learn exactly what a “Pockels Cell” is and why you’d want one. In the meantime, if you’re interested in how the crystals that make the whole world work are made, check out our deep dive into silicon.
Thanks to [Joseph Hopfield] for the tip.
It’s not KDP, it is KH2PO4.
In the thumbnail of the video above (so you don’t even need to have watched the video is the wikipedia page for the chemical ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopotassium_phosphate ) and it literally says in the first line:
Monopotassium phosphate (MKP) (also, potassium dihydrogen phosphate, KDP, or monobasic potassium phosphate) is the inorganic compound with the formula KH2PO4.
Do you go around complaining “It’s not salt, it’s NaCl” every time someone asks you to pass the salt?
Did you mean KD*P (Potassium Dideuterium Phosphate)?
Very satisfying to watch the timelapse
So there is a way to fix the dylithium crystals that got smashed during delivery!
Just replace the dilithium crystals with new Folger crystals. The crew won’t notice…
Hilarious.
Wow. Beautiful work.
Les mentions the need for such crystals in the National Ignition Facility. Theirs are truly huge (with a commensurate budget, naturally): up to 350 kg crystals grown in two months, with a total of a hundred tonnes grown for the facility. It would not have been possible to build the facility without the development of these rapid-growth techniques.