Since moving to Imperial in January I’ve gotten involved in a project on pyrochlores. To be more specific the “species” of interest is Pb₂Ir₂O₆O’. Besides the fact that I seem to end up working with toxic chemicals wherever I go this is actually a structure of beauty. During my initial literature search I decided to play with the ONE reference structure on the ICSD and out came the picture below. It’s a view of the [111] face of said pyrochlore with the atom colours changed. I thought this is too pretty not to share. Now we’ll see how well the synthesis goes. Watch this space!