7 ms·
Goldene: A single atom layer of gold
- darig 3y ago[dead]
- throwup238 3y agoHere we go again... Another nobel prize, another decade of impotent battery news, and countless superconductivity false starts.
- SturgeonsLaw 3y ago“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt
- aledalgrande 3y agoDid you even read the article? It doesn't even have superconductor properties. It's classed as a semiconductor with 2 free sites.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- foobarian 3y agoYou can get these in resin jewelry making kits. The gold leaf in those is super thin!
- ink_13 3y agoNot this thin, unless Chinese manufacturing has made heretofore unknown advances in materials science.
- LoganDark 3y ago[flagged]
- themoonisachees 3y agoYou jest, but I wouldn't put it past cheap Chinese manufacturing to somehow do this at some point in the next 100 years. "How did you invent a room temperature supraconductor? -we thought it would save us $0.00001 per part"
- Reubachi 3y agoEh, margins aren't that low on cheap Chinese gear with questionable IP rights. Not so low that they would develop an in house solution to a .02 cent market deficiency. I know you're jesting the jester, but Chinese manufacturing is on par with "the west" in terms of making money hand over fist on selling plastic junk, with minimal risk due to overpricing
- LoganDark 3y agoIf you can see or handle it, it's not a single atom thick.
- satvikpendem 3y agoGraphene is definitely observable every time you use a pencil. It will mostly be graphite, but parts are graphene as well. And if that isn't enough, the tape method of producing graphene also makes a visible layer.
- riwsky 3y agoGlad they found what they were seaking
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throw1234651234 3y agoWish the Anunnaki just left notes on how they did it. Joking aside, suddenly gold is all over the news, e.g.: "Composite material adorned with gold nanoparticles improves infectious disease testing"* Gold is also going up in value due to global instability. What I am really getting at is - are there any "actual" applications at this time? Also, if anyone feels like summarizing what I could google - did graphene ever live up to the hype, or still too expensive to produce and not quite what it was advertised as? * https://www.mining.com/composite-material-adorned-with-gold-nanoparticles-improves-infectious-disease-testing/ https://www.mining.com/composite-material-adorned-with-gold-...
- gpm 3y ago> What I am really getting at is - are there any "actual" applications at this time? Of course not, they literally just figured out how to make it in a lab through what sounds like a very labor intensive process. They haven't (presumably) figured out how to mass manufacture it. They've probably just begun to characterize it's actual properties. Engineers haven't had their hands on it at all yet. It's a very cool advance in science IMO! It's not a "product" and won't be for awhile. That's normal. Science isn't about making products.
- hilsdev 3y agoScience drives products, though. Very few people would be interested in a square inch of refined sand flipping electric charges between positive and negative, if it didn’t result in a yellow circular man eating dots and chasing ghosts. Graphene shows some interesting properties, perhaps less widely marketable than video games, but time will tell. We’re still before the 8086 on that time scale. For single atom thick gold? I dare not even speculate. Though gold grabs extra attention due to its financial role, its over hyped in this particular regard. It doesn’t degrade and the global reserves can easily absorb some scientific research. All discussions of inflation and / or monetary value tossed completely aside
- TeMPOraL 3y agoYou still need to have some delineation. Science drives new applications, yes - that's why approximately anyone with money is interested in funding it[0]. But it's also not why it's done by practitioners. Scientists tend to be interested in things just because. And then there's rarely a direct connection between foundational research and applications. Like, I doubt any of the physicists that gave us quantum mechanics, nor any of those who gave them the mathematical tools for it, were remotely thinking that this will enable Netflix and HDR TVs. -- [0] - Though FWIW, refined sand flipping electric charges was found to be very interesting not because of a yellow circle eating white circles, but because it helped with designing bombs that eat cities.
- maurimtl 3y ago[flagged]
- gpm 3y agoPer the article, an electron microscope.
- krasin 3y agoScanning electronic microscopes can see and/or manipulate individual atoms. So, the answer to your question is simple: they took a look from the side and confirmed that it's 1 atom thick. 1. https://education.mrsec.wisc.edu/scanning-tunneling-microscope-individual-atom-manipulation/ https://education.mrsec.wisc.edu/scanning-tunneling-microsco...
- tullatulla 3y agoSmall correction: Scanning tunneling microscopes can do that. They are basically a very sharp tip scanned across the surface. Scanning electron microscopes, where a beam of electrons is rastered across the surface can not (yet?) resolve atoms.
- tullatulla 3y ago* cannot resolve atoms on a surface, in transmission mode (STEM) and with the right sample, as in the article it's another story.
- krasin 3y ago> Small correction: Scanning tunneling microscopes can do that. Thanks! You're correct.
- Bjartr 3y agoElectron microscopes are capable of resolving details that small. Here's a side-on view of what they did. You can see the individual gold atoms. https://www.nature.com/articles/s44160-024-00518-4/figures/1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44160-024-00518-4/figures/1 And here's a top down view https://www.nature.com/articles/s44160-024-00518-4/figures/2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44160-024-00518-4/figures/2 Both of these are from the paper describing their process and results https://www.nature.com/articles/s44160-024-00518-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44160-024-00518-4
- WatchDog 3y agoIs single atom thick gold somewhat optically transparent?
- Eji1700 3y agoI would suspect it is essentially invisible to the naked eye. It likely only exists in extremely specific conditions, not just like a sheet. I’m guessing it’s somewhat similar to a microscopic layer around a material that we never notice.
- eleitl 3y agoThin gold layers are green, this looks red if you look at the beaker. There are spectral data available in the original publication https://www.nature.com/articles/s44160-024-00518-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44160-024-00518-4
- semi-extrinsic 3y agoDefinitely yes. Gold is surprisingly transparent for a metal. Famously, gold plating is used on astronaut helmet visors, at 200 nm thickness - i.e. ~1200 atoms thick.
- twic 3y agoIs it more transparent than other metals? How transparent is a 200 nm film of iron or aluminium?
- dataflow 3y agoWhat is the greatest thing we have been able to use graphene for so far?
- confused_boner 3y agogenerating AdSense revenue
- kylebenzle 3y agoTransistors and energy storage probably.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- iancmceachern 3y agoYou can buy "heat spreader" sheets on Digikey that are graphene. They're used to help spread heat laterally when you don't have much thickness to work with.
- scoobertdoobert 3y agoStill in the experimental stage really. So I'd say spin injection and work towards useful spintronic devices
- deepsun 3y agoI wonder if somewhere there is a Graphene Store -- collection of all product utilizing graphene for it's properties. And it's empty.
- helsinkiandrew 3y agoA (surprisingly for a newspaper) good article about its lack of commercial success: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/13/could-graphene-finally-transform-our-world https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/13/could-graphe... > So what happened to the graphene revolution? Why has it not transformed our world? Sir Colin Humphreys, professor of materials science at Queen Mary University of London, has a straightforward answer: “Graphene is still a very promising material. The problem has been scaling up its production. That is why it has not made the impact that was predicted.”
- rsktaker 3y ago> part of the progress is due to serendipidy. Serendipidy means something like unexpected good fortune, but the folktale it comes from (The Three Princes of Serendip - weirdly nostalgic, link below) implies a different meaning. The princes don't roam around with unbelievable luck; rather, they are aware of the world around them and consider what it implies. Probably its meaning now has somehow evolved, which is cool. I pay a lot of attention to the (current states of) evolutions of things. I see it as a kind of refinement process, where valuable things persist. So the valuable thing in question is the idea of unbelievable luck and the raw material was a broad awareness of your surroundings and its implications. Maybe, through generations, people came to understand that the latter manifests the former and this realization became reflected in the usage of the word, resulting in its evolved (current) state. Consider the sum total of all human reason required to evolve this word as the intellect of one person. This superintelligence has then made explicit the idea that awareness manifests luck, which also makes intuitive sense. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:The_Three_Princes_of_Serendip https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:The_Three_Princes...
- Illiana_adam 3y ago[flagged]
- spuz 3y agoWhy are you posting the output of chatgpt?
- Tabular-Iceberg 3y agoWhy goldene and not chrysene?
- shawNell 3y agoWhy chrysene?
- Someone 3y agoGraphene isn’t called carbonene, but, via graphite, indirectly derived from the Greek word γράφειν (to write) To be consistent, they’d derive from the Greek word for gold, which is [1] χρυσός (chrysós). [1] or at least similar to. My greek isn’t good, and that’s an understatement.
- bl0rg 3y agoGraphite is a pretty common word, and it's easy to make the connection between that and what graphene is. Same goes for gold and goldene. Not so much for chrysos and chrysene.
- Tabular-Iceberg 3y agoThe point of systematic naming is predictability through consistency, not appealing to the lowest common denominator. But Sweden isn’t exactly known for its stellar educational system, so it doesn’t surprise me that their chemists don’t learn Greek.
- speed_spread 3y agoAncient Greece wasn't known for its great chemical industry.
- Tabular-Iceberg 3y agoTell that to IUPAC, I don’t make the rules.
- weinzierl 3y agoOversimplified TLDR: They put rolled gold into a Prussian Red solution, waited a couple of months and then rinsed it in Palmolive solution? It is possible they did not obtain the Prussian Red in the good old way of cooking blood and bones with potash but ordered it from the Internet: https://www.morphisto.de/en/shop/detail/d/KIT%3A_Ätzmittel_nach_Murakami/15207/ https://www.morphisto.de/en/shop/detail/d/KIT%3A_Ätzmittel_n... On a more serious note, it is surprisingly easy to create mono-molecular films. Allegedly Benjamin Franklin made one on Mount Pond near Clapham Common in 1774.
- worthless-trash 3y agoDo you have the corrected link ?
- weinzierl 3y agoFixed, thanks!
- mcmoor 3y agoReminds me of this Tom Scott video https://youtu.be/t60EfnqZKrQ?si=1NfOtkw10GZwE25Z https://youtu.be/t60EfnqZKrQ?si=1NfOtkw10GZwE25Z
- BlueTemplar 3y agoBut what is cooler, using an ancestral Japanese forging reagent to make gold flakes in cysteine milk ("aureos" ?), or using scotch tape on a pencil ?
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoReading about the process, I suspect that this will be challenging to do at scale (the general issue with graphene).
- dhosek 3y agoIf it weren’t for the captions, I would assume that every single photo in this article was stock photography: “Scientists doing sciencey things.”
- ape4 3y agoMaybe the photographer told the scientists - your apparatus doesn't look right - here use this pipette and beaker for the photo.
- SiempreViernes 3y agoWhat we can say for sure is that the editor of the article chose very generic science-y photos. Personally I don't think the activities in photos are staged: taking the samples out of the oven and the mixing of the etching acid are real steps they need to take, just not very interesting scientifically speaking.
- oorza 3y agoBut look at their faces, they're having a gas.
- gpm 3y agoPersonally I suspect some of the activities are "staged", because it would be weird to have a camera at that angle otherwise, but representative of things that actually occur. I'm not really sure anything done in the average lab makes for a great picture tbh.
- dhosek 3y agoHaving been the subject of a number of photos for the local paper when I was a nerdy high-achieving high school student, awkwardly posed “candid” shots are kind of par for the game.
- dorianh 3y agoI like the second picture where it looks like the professor is making sure that the material is indeed one atom thin, but not two!
- RecycledEle 3y agoThis makes me want to make an Excel worksheet with each element on a row, and columns for mono-atomic, 1-d single-atom filaments, and 2-d ___ene sheets. It would be interesting to research (Google) how many of them we can reliably make.
- peter_d_sherman 3y ago>"“We had created the base material with completely different applications in mind. We started with an electrically conductive ceramics called titanium silicon carbide, where silicon is in thin layers. Then the idea was to coat the material with gold to make a contact. But when we exposed the component to high temperature, the silicon layer was replaced by gold inside the base material,” says Lars Hultman. This phenomenon is called intercalation and what the researchers had discovered was titanium gold carbide." Hmm, never knew about Intercalation before this... let's learn more about it!: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercalation_(chemistry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercalation_(chemistry) >"By 2023, all commercial Li-ion cells use intercalation compounds as active materials" OK, so Intercalation appears to be deeply related to the principle of energy storage (of which one specific subcase is Li-ion batteries...) Also, there's this: >"“If you make a material extremely thin, something extraordinary happens – as with graphene. The same thing happens with gold. As you know, gold is usually a metal, but if single-atom-layer thick, the gold can become a semiconductor instead,” says Shun Kashiwaya, researcher at the Materials Design Division at Linköping University." If this is the case -- then the following would be an interesting question for all students of Chemistry, present and future: Can all Periodic Table Elements -- be turned into semiconductors (specifically transistors) -- if they are only a single atom layer thick? ? And, a follow-up set of questions (once that's known): If any Elements cannot -- then which ones, exactly, cannot, and why exactly, can they not be? ? ??? (You know -- for all of the Chem majors out there! <g>)
- bookofjoe 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40079841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40079841