We saw a liquid turn into a solid seven million times faster than anyone thought was physically possible.
March 27, 2026
Original Paper
Martensitic-like transition between liquid crystalline and crystalline phases of prototypical discotic organic semiconductor
arXiv · 2603.25445
The Takeaway
Normally, liquids freeze through a slow process of growing crystals bit by bit, but this organic semiconductor uses a 'Martensitic' shortcut usually only seen in solid metals. This allows the material to snap into a solid structure almost instantly across a large area, bypassing the speed limits of standard solidification.
From the abstract
Phase transitions between crystalline solids occur either through the nucleation and growth mechanism, a process that is slow and destructive or through the diffusion-less and order preserving Martensitic route. In both organic and inorganic materials, Martensitic transformations are known to occur only between phases with crystalline symmetry. We demonstrate here that for canonical discotic organic semiconductor HAT6, the transition between the liquid crystalline columnar hexagonal phase (ColH)