Epic Quest Bio The case files
Case No. 111 · the exotic forty · have you seen this molecule?

Matryoshka cluster

Platonic solids, nested like Russian dolls

File sealed

The detectives are still writing this one up. The poster and the facts are below; the film and the interrogation room open soon.

Booking photographs

Matryoshka cluster, front view, against a height chart in nanometers
FRONT
Matryoshka cluster, side view
SIDE · COD 7042040

The suspect, from its real atomic coordinates. Drag to turn it. Height chart in nanometers, ruled every 0.05 nm. A six-inch nesting doll is about two hundred million times taller.

Rap sheet

Answers to
Matryoshka. Formally [Sb@Pd12@Sb20]3−.
Height
0.81 nm on an edge, 0.69 nm on a face.
Weight
6.4 zeptograms. No carbon, no hydrogen.
Symmetry
Ih, like a buckyball.
Build
An Sb atom, in an icosahedron of 12 Pd, in a dodecahedron of 20 Sb.
Bonds
Sixty spokes between the shells. The shells barely hold hands.
Charges
Seen at 4−, 3−, 1− and 1+. Should flinch at 4−, unseen by X-rays.
Associates
An arsenic-nickel twin. A “bronze matryoshka” stuck in its crystal.
Last seen
In black needle crystals, in a lab in Fuzhou.
1,400,000,000,000,000

of them in the black needle of crystal that sat for its X-ray, give or take.
You’ve never seen one.

CASE FILE: Li, Z. et al. (2017) Counterion-induced crystallization of intermetalloid Matryoshka clusters [Sb@Pd12@Sb20]3−,4−. Dalton Transactions 46, 3453–3456.

The poster on the street

The wanted poster for Matryoshka cluster

This is the photocopied wanted poster for Matryoshka cluster, No. 111 of the exotic forty. They were made for noticeboards around Boston, Cambridge and the rest of the east coast.

Found one? Scan its QR code with your phone. If you're a signed-in player, the sighting goes on your record with +1 XP.

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