World’s thinnest material
p2pnet.net news:- The world’s thinnest material has been created by physicists at the University of Manchester and Max-Planck Institute in Germany.
It’s a membrane only one atom thick and, say the researchers, it can be used to sieve gases, make ultra-fast electronic switches and image individual molecules with unprecedented accuracy.
“This is not only about smart gadgets,” says the University of Manchester’s professor Andre Geim. “Like polymers whose pervasiveness changed our everyday life forever, one-atom-thick materials could be used in a myriad of routine applications from clothing to computers.”
Two years ago, scientists discovered a new class of materials that can be viewed as individual atomic planes pulled out of bulk crystals, says the university.
“These one-atom-thick materials and in particular graphene – a gauze of carbon atoms resembling chicken wire – have rapidly become one of the hottest topics in physics,” it states, going on, “However, it has remained doubtful whether such materials can exist in the free state, without being placed on top of other materials.
Now an international research team led by Dr Jannik Meyer in Germany and Geim in Britain has, “managed to make free-hanging graphene.”
Geim recently won the 2007 Mott Medal and Prize by The Institute of Physics for his discovery of graphene and he and his fellow researchers have also found the reason for the stability of such atomically-thin materials, which were previously presumed to be impossible, says the university.
“They report that graphene is not perfectly flat but instead gently crumpled out of plane, which helps stabilise otherwise intrinsically unstable ultra-thin matter.”
It’s a, “completely new type of technology – even nanotechnology is not the right word to describe these new membranes,” says Geim, the director of the Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology.
“We have made proof-of-concept devices and believe the technology transfer to other areas should be straightforward. However, the real challenge is to make such membranes cheap and readily available for large-scale applications.”
The discovery opens up practically infinite possibilities for applications people have never even thought of yet, says Geim.
Also See:
University of Manchester – Manchester physicists pioneer new super-thin technology, March 1, 2007
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March 2nd, 2007 at 11:13 am
Even thinner than the case the *IAAs have against their victims!