Spherulites are an ubiquitous form of crystal aggregate, found in a diverse range of fundamentally different materials, e.g. in viscous magmas [Colburn, 1998] and laminar crusts [Larkin et al., 1997], in vitamins and red blood cells [Streekstra et al., 1993], and in a wide range of industrially important thermoplastic polymers [Remaly et al., 1970]. They are also found in thin films of water, in salts which have been crystallized from thickened solutions [McHugh et al., 1973], and in many other systems. The essential features of spherulitic crystallization are the same across this wide diversity of substances. Spherulites are spherical aggregates of anisotropic crystals that grow from a common, central, nonspherical, sheaf-like aggregate.

Recently, studies of spherulites have concentrated mainly on polymer systems where they are frequently found form of crystal growth from the melt or from dilute solution. In the latter case, polymer chains fold back upon themselves to form s.c. "lamellar" crystals of the thickness approx. 10--20 nm [Meissner et al., 1987]; the degree of ordering within lamellae is dependent on the crystallization conditions. In the former case, a less ordered system with more or less separated chains is created.