[HN Gopher] Goldene: A single atom layer of gold
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Goldene: A single atom layer of gold
        
       Author : peutetre
       Score  : 205 points
       Date   : 2024-04-18 01:09 UTC (21 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (liu.se)
 (TXT) w3m dump (liu.se)
        
       | throwup238 wrote:
       | Here we go again... Another nobel prize, another decade of
       | impotent battery news, and countless superconductivity false
       | starts.
        
         | SturgeonsLaw wrote:
         | "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
        
           | noisy_boy wrote:
           | Only the horseman falls on the battlefield, how will that
           | child fall who crawls on his knees.
           | 
           | Shah Abdul Aziz Dehlavi
        
             | spauldo wrote:
             | Dude apparently didn't have a hand in raising any children
             | if he's never seen a crawling child fall.
             | 
             | Failure exists at all levels.
        
         | aledalgrande wrote:
         | Did you even read the article? It doesn't even have
         | superconductor properties. It's classed as a semiconductor with
         | 2 free sites.
        
       | foobarian wrote:
       | You can get these in resin jewelry making kits. The gold leaf in
       | those is super thin!
        
         | ink_13 wrote:
         | Not this thin, unless Chinese manufacturing has made heretofore
         | unknown advances in materials science.
        
           | themoonisachees wrote:
           | You 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 wrote:
             | Eh, 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 wrote:
         | If you can see or handle it, it's not a single atom thick.
        
           | satvikpendem wrote:
           | Graphene 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.
        
             | mkl wrote:
             | I doubt you're ever seeing a single layer from a pencil.
             | 
             | "Although graphene is probably produced every time one uses
             | a pencil, it is extremely difficult to find small graphene
             | crystallites in the "haystack" of millions of thicker
             | graphitic flakes which appear during the cleavage. In fact,
             | no modern visualization technique including atomic-force,
             | scanning- tunneling, and electron microscopies is capable
             | of finding graphene because of their extremely low
             | throughput at the required atomic resolution or the absence
             | of clear signatures distinguishing atomic monolayers from
             | thicker flakes." -- Making Graphene Visible https://www.phy
             | sics.purdue.edu/quantum/files/CarbonNano/make..., which
             | shows it can be made visible by preparing it on an
             | appropriate substrate.
             | 
             | More here, where the answer is both "no", and "yes, if it's
             | big enough": https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Is-graphene-
             | visible-to-the-...
        
             | kylebenzle wrote:
             | Not true.
        
             | achow wrote:
             | Graphite, not graphene.
        
           | bee_rider wrote:
           | Says you! Some of us have the skills required to handle a
           | .0000003mm mechanical pencil. In 2B even!
        
             | LoganDark wrote:
             | Interesting, but that sounds like it's in the realm of
             | tools, not direct handling. Either a normal sized pencil
             | that contains that thickness of material, or a microscopic
             | pencil that itself needs tools to be manipulated.
        
       | riwsky wrote:
       | Glad they found what they were seaking
        
       | throw1234651234 wrote:
       | Wish 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-...
        
         | gpm wrote:
         | > 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 wrote:
           | Science 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 wrote:
             | You 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.
        
         | hgomersall wrote:
         | It's not going up in value, it's going up in price.
        
       | WatchDog wrote:
       | Is single atom thick gold somewhat optically transparent?
        
         | Eji1700 wrote:
         | I 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 wrote:
           | Thin 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
        
             | Retric wrote:
             | If I am reading that right, the beaker is filled with lots
             | of sheets and clumps of sheets not just a single one. So,
             | it's not clear what if anything a single sheet would look
             | like.
        
             | sp332 wrote:
             | I think gold reflects red light, so it lets greenish light
             | through if you use it as a filter.
        
         | semi-extrinsic wrote:
         | Definitely 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 wrote:
           | Is it more transparent than other metals? How transparent is
           | a 200 nm film of iron or aluminium?
        
             | Tuna-Fish wrote:
             | Not transparent at all on visible light wavelengths. Light
             | transmission in metals obeys the skin effect, which means
             | that AC fields (such as the fields in light) do not like to
             | penetrate deep into the material, and the skin depth for
             | visible light wavelengths in most metals is expressed in
             | individual nanometers.
        
           | djtango wrote:
           | TIL! Thank you for sharing - love me my chemistry after
           | all...
           | 
           | For those who are curious: it fends off harmful EM radiation
           | 
           | https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff1997/hm2.html#:~:text=A%20th.
           | ...
        
           | manmal wrote:
           | It is also used as a coating for window panes, as it's great
           | at reflecting infrared radiation (reducing heat loss). My
           | father's house has such windows.
        
             | beretguy wrote:
             | Are those windows expensive?
        
               | spiderfarmer wrote:
               | Yes, but mostly because of the manufacturing process
               | (requires a vacuum).
        
             | formerly_proven wrote:
             | Stealth aircraft also use gold-plated canopies to a)
             | contain emissions from the cockpit to the cockpit b)
             | reflect incoming radiation of a well-defined surface
             | instead of whatever mess is inside the cockpit.
        
         | rrr_oh_man wrote:
         | I mean, matter is mostly empty space...
        
           | IshKebab wrote:
           | Only if you really distort the definitions. The "empty space"
           | you are thinking about _is_ the matter. You can 't just put
           | other stuff there.
           | 
           | There's a similar wrong meme about how you never really
           | "touch" anything.
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | > There's a similar wrong meme about how you never really
             | "touch" anything.
             | 
             | Ok, what is the exact moment you touch something? How close
             | do the atoms need to be?
        
               | vortegne wrote:
               | When weak interaction starts happening.
        
               | sp332 wrote:
               | When does the weak interaction stop happening?
        
               | wizzwizz4 wrote:
               | High energies, about three orders of magnitude higher
               | than the LHC produces. (If you squint.)
        
               | z2h-a6n wrote:
               | How about this: two objects are touching when the
               | interaction forces between the objects are of similar
               | magnitude to the interatomic forces within the objects.
               | Very generally speaking, this will happen when the
               | distance between the objects is about the same as the
               | distance between atoms within the objects.
        
               | amelius wrote:
               | Ok, so I conclude from this that touching is not an exact
               | science.
        
               | z2h-a6n wrote:
               | To be somewhat pedantic: "touching" is a word. The extent
               | to which it is or is not an "exact science" depends on
               | what is meant by "touching", and by "exact science". The
               | definition I gave of "touching" could be made arbitrarily
               | more precise by specifying more precisely the interaction
               | forces under consideration, and the level of precision to
               | which one should compare their magnitudes. What you mean
               | by "exact science" is something I cannot guess at with
               | any useful level of precision. Whether or not any of this
               | has any bearing on the original topic of discussion is
               | another matter.
        
               | temporarely wrote:
               | Do this for 'touching fire' to clarify the actual issue.
        
               | IshKebab wrote:
               | There isn't an exact moment, any more than there is an
               | exact height that is "tall". And yet, tall people exist.
        
               | amelius wrote:
               | The tallest person in the world will say that only normal
               | and short people exist.
        
               | williamdclt wrote:
               | I'd bet very good money that they wouldn't say that, no
        
           | hacker_88 wrote:
           | except protons. These are infinitely dense
        
       | dataflow wrote:
       | What is the greatest thing we have been able to use graphene for
       | so far?
        
         | confused_boner wrote:
         | generating AdSense revenue
        
         | kylebenzle wrote:
         | Transistors and energy storage probably.
        
         | iancmceachern wrote:
         | You 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 wrote:
         | Still in the experimental stage really. So I'd say spin
         | injection and work towards useful spintronic devices
        
         | deepsun wrote:
         | I wonder if somewhere there is a Graphene Store -- collection
         | of all product utilizing graphene for it's properties. And it's
         | empty.
        
         | helsinkiandrew wrote:
         | A (surprisingly for a newspaper) good article about its lack of
         | commercial success:
         | 
         | 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."
        
           | bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
           | That article puts nuclear in a "list of technologies that
           | failed to make the grade". So I question everything else in
           | the article.
           | 
           | I agree that nuclear is underutilized, but putting it on the
           | same list as an electric bike that flopped is.... I don't
           | even have words
        
             | helsinkiandrew wrote:
             | Whatever your feelings about nuclear power, you can't
             | really argue with the reason they think it has "failed to
             | make the grade":
             | 
             | > "Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy
             | too cheap to meter" - Lewis Strauss, then chairman of the
             | United States Atomic Energy Commission in 1954.
        
               | bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
               | Disagree. The comment is on price. Price is driven by a
               | huge number of factors. It's not as simple as "if nuclear
               | is successful, price is low otherwise it's high". One of
               | those reasons is that when someone is more available you
               | consume more, making price sticky.
               | 
               | Also, consider where that comment comes from. It comes
               | from a person who benefits from arguing that nuclear has
               | magical economic powers. So you're saying that it's ok to
               | say "nuclear failed because it didn't live up to
               | ridiculous hype?". No, nonsense. Nuclear has been a huge
               | success.
        
               | toss1 wrote:
               | The price comment was not about "price is low"; it was
               | about it becoming _SO_ plentiful that the overhead in
               | metering the cost would exceed the revenue and it could
               | be just an on /off subscription
               | 
               | This HAS happened with telecom services, where long-
               | distance calls used to even be sometimes only one town
               | over, and were charged by the minute. Toll-free (800)-
               | numbers were a big deal. Now, the network is so
               | successful and calls so numerous that it is literally too
               | cheap to meter - you either subscribe or you don't. Per-
               | call metering is only the case in some international
               | calls.
               | 
               | Nuclear electric power _could_ have become this
               | ubiquitous and successful, where the overhead of per-
               | kilo-Watt metering outweighed the revenues. It would have
               | _merely_ had to scale up several more orders of
               | magnitude. _THIS_ was the prediction.
               | 
               | Obviously, although nuclear did have some success this
               | did _not_ happen. The costs of commissioning, building,
               | and decommissioning individual plants were just too high.
               | 
               | We cannot conflate the actual modest success, producing
               | barely 20% of power in the US in 1995[0], with the
               | prediction of nuclear succeeding like telecomm.
               | 
               | It did not happen.
               | 
               | I think it could yet happen with some of the new small
               | (neighborhood-scale), self-contained, inherently safe
               | designs. But that is another prediction.
               | 
               | [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/273208/nuclear-
               | share-of-...
        
               | bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
               | I guess we differ in that you call generating 20% of the
               | energy in the USA "not a success" lol
        
               | toss1 wrote:
               | Yikes. I specifically said it was a success.
               | 
               | But after 2/3 of a century, nuclear has clearly failed to
               | attain the level of success of other technologies, and
               | it's success has been capped.
               | 
               | Moreover, nuclear is now on a clear and accelerating
               | decline. The peak was 1995, producing 20.1% of US power,
               | and it's now fallen from 19.7% to 18.2% in the last two
               | years.
               | 
               | I wish nuclear had enjoyed more success; it still may
               | with new smaller-scale and inherently safe technologies.
               | 
               | But the current cost profile and construction profile is
               | so far out of line with the continually-rapidly-
               | declining-costs of competing solar and wind technologies,
               | that current nuclear is only falling further behind. To
               | build a nuclear plant vs solar or wind requires far more
               | capital, has a far longer permitting process and
               | construction process before a return on capital can even
               | begin, and a far more costly end-of-life phase (notice
               | we're not even mentioning the usual highlights of nuclear
               | waste disposal, containment, and nuclear material
               | proliferation). Nuclear has simply become an unmanageable
               | option.
               | 
               | So, considering that it's success was limited, and is now
               | in decline with no end in sight, how is it unfair to
               | characterize it as "failing to make the grade"?
        
               | xyzzy_plugh wrote:
               | The _United States_ has failed at nuclear power. It 's
               | much more successful elsewhere.
        
               | Qwertious wrote:
               | Where is nuclear energy _too cheap to meter_?
        
               | xyzzy_plugh wrote:
               | Measuring success this way is nonsensical. Is there
               | _anything_ that is too cheap to meter? Are other forms of
               | energy also unsuccessful until they produce energy too
               | cheap too meter? This isn 't serious criteria.
               | 
               | The argument is that this is a silly framing with which
               | to judge success. I agree!
               | 
               | I for one am extremely content consuming energy, more
               | than half of which is nuclear, followed by hydro. It is
               | very successful.
        
               | SiempreViernes wrote:
               | Measuring success by whether the proponents delivers on
               | their promises seems _entirely_ fair.
        
               | alephknoll wrote:
               | By that criteria, everything is a failure. After all,
               | it's the job of the proponent to oversell you on things.
        
               | SiempreViernes wrote:
               | What sort of life experiences have made you come to this
               | conclusion?
               | 
               | Has nobody ever told you "come on, it'll be fun" and
               | proven to be right by subsequent events?
        
         | atoav wrote:
         | How quick do you expect a material science innovation to land
         | in commercial products?
         | 
         | E.g. if the superior quality of material X is proven in one
         | study today, it might take at least a decade for material X to
         | make it into a first run of a prototype chip series -- maybe --
         | if there have been a hundred follow-up studies that showed
         | promise as well. Then how long does it take for that prototype
         | chip series to feel like a viable alternative to existing,
         | trusted solutions for product manufacturers? Most manufacturers
         | will rely on the trusted, tested, known thing and only slowly
         | will the new tech seep into their portfolio. At least another
         | decade till you see significant adoption.
         | 
         | The truth is that what we have in terms of materials is already
         | pretty good -- matching e.g. the precision with which we can
         | manipulate silicone is not a thing you might just reinvent with
         | another material with the snap of a finger. And because what we
         | have is pretty good realizing the advantages of a new material
         | is not a matter of years, but of decades. And this is a matter
         | not only of physics, but of new manufacturing processes, a ton
         | of R&D and investment. In some cases this might be easier,
         | because the new material can be used with old processes, in
         | other cases it might demand entirely different processes that
         | haven't been invented yet.
         | 
         | So everybody asking where the revolutionary thing from last
         | years material science paper is just shows that they have no
         | idea how the things surrounding them came to be. These things
         | are moving far slower than you think. But they are moving.
        
           | tjoff wrote:
           | Graphene was insanely hyped close to two decades ago though.
           | Every other month you'd hear stories of things that could be
           | disrupted by it. That was my recollection, though could be
           | biased and me misremembering. But it feels like a valid
           | question, especially since it has been two decades.
           | 
           | Relevant section from Wikipedia
           | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene :
           | 
           | > _In 2004, the material was rediscovered, isolated and
           | investigated at the University of Manchester,[13][14] by
           | Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov. In 2010, Geim and
           | Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their
           | "groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional
           | material graphene".[15] High-quality graphene proved to be
           | surprisingly easy to isolate.
           | 
           | Graphene has become a valuable and useful nanomaterial due to
           | its exceptionally high tensile strength, electrical
           | conductivity, transparency, and being the thinnest two-
           | dimensional material in the world.[4] The global market for
           | graphene was $9 million in 2012,[16] with most of the demand
           | from research and development in semiconductor, electronics,
           | electric batteries,[17] and composites._
           | 
           | There is also a section about applications that expands on it
           | a bit.
        
             | atoav wrote:
             | When I say "a decade" that was meant as an example
             | timespan. Depending on how complicated the processes turn
             | out you could also look at "multiple decades" or in some
             | cases also "never".
             | 
             | A problem with today's science world is that the funding is
             | competitive to a degree scientists need to "sell" their
             | findings with practical applications -- the fact they
             | expanded the edge of human knowledge has become worthless.
             | So our systemically incentivized-to-sell scientists do just
             | that. And sometimes it works out and sometimes it is just
             | far fetched bs. But because the edge of current science is
             | so precise, so small, so ho, so cold, so fast, so low
             | energy, etc. translating even the best of finsings into
             | commercially scalable processes has become a _major_
             | undertaking and despite unprecedented wealth on the top of
             | the society, the ones on top have become averse to risk.
        
               | tjoff wrote:
               | I got that, but the question wasn't "where are the mind-
               | blowing stuff we should have had by now", but rather -
               | what are the most significant uses we've found? In my
               | mind also implying that we might have long ways to go for
               | the full potential.
               | 
               | Perfectly reasonable question, especially considering
               | past projections.
        
             | 7thaccount wrote:
             | Yep. They made entire disciplines of nanoscience and nano
             | engineering to train grads to do jobs that didn't exist. I
             | was one very briefly before seeing the writing on the wall
             | and moving to electrical engineering.
        
         | bloopernova wrote:
         | I have a heating pad that uses it. It's supposed to penetrate
         | deeper, and does seem to help my lower back.
         | 
         | If it's placebo, I'll take it.
        
       | rsktaker wrote:
       | > 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...
        
       | Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
       | Why goldene and not chrysene?
        
         | shawNell wrote:
         | Why chrysene?
        
           | Someone wrote:
           | Graphene isn't called carbonene, but, via graphite,
           | indirectly derived from the Greek word graphein (to write)
           | 
           | To be consistent, they'd derive from the Greek word for gold,
           | which is [1] khrusos (chrysos).
           | 
           | [1] or at least similar to. My greek isn't good, and that's
           | an understatement.
        
             | bl0rg wrote:
             | Graphite 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 wrote:
               | The 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 wrote:
               | Ancient Greece wasn't known for its great chemical
               | industry.
        
               | Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
               | Tell that to IUPAC, I don't make the rules.
        
               | temp0826 wrote:
               | The most Greek a chemistry student in the states would
               | get is from frat parties
        
               | anthk wrote:
               | Aurene then, from Latin aurum. Also, in Spanish aureo
               | it's still used as 'golden'.
        
           | mock-possum wrote:
           | It sounds cooler
        
         | kaetemi wrote:
         | Who's that Pokemon?
        
         | fuzzfactor wrote:
         | Chrysene is already the name of a known hydrocarbon having
         | polycyclic aromatic structure, 4 fused rings in a particular
         | pattern.
         | 
         | Interestingly, it is a 2-dimensional (planar) compound itself.
        
       | weinzierl wrote:
       | Oversimplified 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_Atzmittel_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 wrote:
         | Do you have the corrected link ?
        
           | weinzierl wrote:
           | Fixed, thanks!
        
         | mcmoor wrote:
         | Reminds me of this Tom Scott video
         | https://youtu.be/t60EfnqZKrQ?si=1NfOtkw10GZwE25Z
        
       | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
       | Reading about the process, I suspect that this will be
       | challenging to do at scale (the general issue with graphene).
        
       | dhosek wrote:
       | If it weren't for the captions, I would assume that every single
       | photo in this article was stock photography: "Scientists doing
       | sciencey things."
        
         | ape4 wrote:
         | Maybe the photographer told the scientists - your apparatus
         | doesn't look right - here use this pipette and beaker for the
         | photo.
        
           | SiempreViernes wrote:
           | What 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 wrote:
             | But look at their faces, they're having a gas.
        
             | gpm wrote:
             | Personally 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 wrote:
           | Having 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 wrote:
         | I like the second picture where it looks like the professor is
         | making sure that the material is indeed one atom thin, but not
         | two!
        
         | keybored wrote:
         | I didn't get that impression since the characters are
         | recurring.
        
           | shagie wrote:
           | Repeating characters doesn't mean "not stock". Consider
           | https://www.shutterstock.com/g/antonioguillem - you've seen
           | some of his work. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-
           | photo/disloyal-man-walkin... ... and an entire story of stock
           | photos https://www.ladbible.com/community/weird-extra-
           | pictures-show...
        
             | dhosek wrote:
             | In fact week before last, John Oliver had a segment about
             | his favorite recurring model in stock photos on Last Week
             | Tonight. Also interesting to note that some well-known
             | actors (or at least two) got their start modeling for stock
             | photos.
        
               | keybored wrote:
               | Well played guys. I mean well actuallied. ;)
        
       | RecycledEle wrote:
       | This 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 wrote:
       | >""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)
       | 
       | >"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
       | Linkoping 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>)
        
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