Lattice Matching (LM)—Prevention of Inadvertent Duplicate Publications of Crystal Structures

Lattice-matching techniques have proved to be extremely effective for the identification of unknown crystalline materials. A commonly employed lattice-matching strategy is based on matching the reduced cell of an unknown against a database of known materials represented by their respective standard reduced cells. The success of the method relies on the fact that the lattice or the lattice plus chemical information (e.g., element types) is highly characteristic of a material—like a fingerprint. Because of its intrinsic power, the procedure has many and diverse applications—in materials characterization, in nano-technology, in epitaxial growth, in materials design, etc. An especially fruitful role for the method is in the journal publication process as the quality of the scientific literature can be enhanced. The focus herein is on the major role that lattice matching can play in the prevention of inadvertent duplicate publications of the same structure and in the determination of key cross-references.