Mo Jiang, Richard D. Braatz
MIT Department of Chemical Engineering

"This image contains crystals of L asparagine monohydrate (LAM) from continuous cooling crystallization out of its aqueous solution. In bio-pharmaceutical industry, proper size distribution of drug crystals improves the efficacy of the final products (e.g., solubility and bioavailability), as well as the efficiency of the manufacturing processes (e.g., filtration and washing). Imaging is usually a direct way to check sizes of crystals. We were checking the effect of nucleation methods on the final sizes of crystals."