In materials science, dispersion is the fraction of atoms of a material exposed to the surface. In general, D = NS/N, where D is the dispersion, NS is the number of surface atoms and NT is the total number of atoms of the material.<ref>Template:Citation</ref> It is an important concept in heterogeneous catalysis, since only atoms exposed to the surface can affect catalytic surface reactions. Dispersion increases with decreasing crystallite size and approaches unity at a crystallite diameter of about 0.1 nm.