INSTABILITY OF FACETED CRYSTALS IN TWO DIMENSIONS. Mu Wang, Cheng Sun, and Nai-ben Ming, National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093 & Center for Advanced Studies of Science and Technology of Microstructures, Nanjing 210093, China

We present here our recent studies on the instability of two-dimensional hexagonal faceted crystals in lipid monolayers. The experimental observations indicate that there exists a critical size for stable faceted growth, beyond which the two-dimensional faceted crystal may develop into dendrite or cellular pattern depending on the anisotropy of the amphiphilic molecules. For the dendritic growth in our experiments, the tip growth rate is extremely low and the product of the square of the tip curvature radius and the growth rate $^2V$ is a constant several orders of magnitude smaller than previous reports.