Note: Indian newspapers* are pretty careless about phrases like "world's thinnest" or "world's strongest", so take that part with a grain of salt. They often ju

Note: Indian newspapers* are pretty careless about phrases like "world's thinnest" or "world's strongest", so take that part with a grain of salt. They often just mean mind-bogglingly thin, and don't mean it as an absolute factual statement. For eg., there seems to be older news[1][2] from 2007 where European researchers created graphene sheets of single atom thickness, at 0.35 nm. (*of course this probably also applies to other countries' media to varying degrees, I'm just most familiar with this tendency here in India.) Edit: The actual journal paper[3] doesn't mention the exact thickness of the nanosheets, but it also mentions nanoflakes and nanograins and other forms of the material, and those seem to be measured at "~6-7 nm". And from what I can tell, the actual nanosheets vary in thickness and are not this utterly uniform sheets I had conjured up in mind. Pretty fascinating stuff, there's apparently a 'NanoArtography' competition too [4], and this group won the People's Choice award with "The flower and the bud": > The image[5] represents magnesium and boron based nanostructures synthesized by a bottom-up approach being developed by our research group. [...] One of the clusters resembles a full grown flower and another cluster nearby it resembles a bud in the process of growing. The clusters seem connected by a stalk like structure. This nanoflower and nanobud was imaged using a Scanning electron microscope. Image width is 0.009 mm. [1] http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/03/01/scientists-develop-thinnest-material-ever-one-atom-thick.html http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/03/01/scientists-develop-t... [2] http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/thinnest-material/ http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/thin... [3] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cphc.201701033/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cphc.201701033/ab... [4] http://nano.drexel.edu/nanoartography-competition/ http://nano.drexel.edu/nanoartography-competition/ [5] http://nano.drexel.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/peoples-choice.jpg http://nano.drexel.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/peoples-ch...