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Doctor Yueh put an object on the table between them - black, oblong, no larger than the end of Paul's thumb. "It is a very old Orange Catholic Bible made for s
by pampa 6y ago
Doctor Yueh put an object on the table between them - black, oblong, no larger than the end of Paul's thumb.
"It is a very old Orange Catholic Bible made for space travelers. Not a filmbook, but actually printed on filament paper. It has its own magnifier and electrostatic charge system." He picked it up, demonstrated. "The book is held closed by the charge, which forces against spring-locked covers. You press the edge - thus, and the pages you've selected repel each other and the book opens."
- kragen 6y agoThere are many thinner materials: 10-micron aluminum foil is commonplace in households, and disposable plastic shopping bags are usually about the same thickness, while this paper is 20 microns. Any of these could fit Yueh's 1800-page book into the thickness of Paul's thumb, 18-36 mm. But typical gold leaf is 0.1 nanometers thick, a hundred times thinner. What's notable about this paper is that it's paper that thin.
- downerending 6y agoI'd like a wafer that thin.
- kragen 6y agoHave you thought about trying thin-film amorphous semiconductors?
- downerending 6y agoNah, I'm full.
- kragen 6y agoJust a thin film, sir!
- downerending 6y agoWell, perhaps just a micron or two...
- oxfeed65261 6y agoYou would still explode ofc.
- kragen 6y agoEven if it's not mint?
- N1H1L 6y agoThe number for gold leaf cannot be right. The unit cell spacing for gold is around 0.4 nm. At 0.1nm you will have monolayer gold. By the way, the first monolayer metals were synthesized just last year, and published this March in Nature Materials.
- kragen 6y agoYou're right, it's 100 nanometers. I first wrote "100 nanometers", then decided to convert to microns to make it easier to compare to the other thicknesses, and then forgot to change the unit name from "nanometers" to "microns". Also "a hundred times thinner" should read "a thousand times thinner". Thank you for the correction! I thought iron monolayers had been made in 2014?
- N1H1L 6y agoThey were just around 10-20 atoms that were inside graphene holes. They were technically the first, but I have big doubts about their scalability. The new work I was mentioning comes from Josh Robinson's lab at Penn State - the same guys that synthesized monolayer gallium nitride 3 years back.
- kragen 6y agoI see! Thank you!