A team of researchers from Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, the University of Washington and the Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute has found that reaction kinetics are the factors that drive chiral nanocrystal formation in tellurium atoms. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes preparing Te crystals in different ways and then watched what happened to them under a microscope. Inna Popov with the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has published a Perspectives piece in the same journal issue outlining recent research into the means by which chiral compounds form chiral crystal shapes and also gives an overview of the work done by the team in this new effort.