Laser Michelson interferometry investigation of protein crystal growth

Laser Michelson interferometry was applied to study the elementary growth mechanism of protein crystals. The results for the (101) face of tetragonal lysozyme show that for supersaturations σ higher than 1.6, growth proceeds by two-dimensional nucleation. However, at lower supersaturations growth is governed by dislocation sources. The observed non-linearity of the step velocity versus supersaturation dependence for supersaturations up to 1.2 is...