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Meet 'goldene': this gilded cousin of graphene is also one atom thick
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01118-0NEWS
18 April 2024
Meet ‘goldene’: this gilded cousin of graphene is also one atom thick
Sheets of gold might find use as catalysts, or in light-sensing devices.
It is the world’s thinnest gold leaf: a gossamer sheet of gold just one atom thick. Researchers have synthesized1 the long-sought material, known as goldene, which is expected to capture light in ways that could be useful in applications such as sensing and catalysis.
Goldene is a gilded cousin of graphene, the iconic atom-thin material made of carbon that was discovered in 2004. Since then, scientists have identified hundreds more of these 2D materials. But it has been particularly difficult to produce 2D sheets of metals, because their atoms have always tended to cluster together to make nanoparticles instead.
[...]
To prepare goldene, the Linköping researchers started with a material containing atomic monolayers of silicon sandwiched between titanium carbide. When they added gold on top of this sandwich, it diffused into the structure and exchanged places with the silicon to create a trapped atom-thick layer of gold (see ‘Gold mining’). They then etched away the titanium carbide to release free-standing goldene sheets that were up to 100 nanometres wide, and roughly 400 times as thin as the thinnest commercial gold leaf, Hultman estimates.
[...]
18 April 2024
Meet ‘goldene’: this gilded cousin of graphene is also one atom thick
Sheets of gold might find use as catalysts, or in light-sensing devices.
It is the world’s thinnest gold leaf: a gossamer sheet of gold just one atom thick. Researchers have synthesized1 the long-sought material, known as goldene, which is expected to capture light in ways that could be useful in applications such as sensing and catalysis.
Goldene is a gilded cousin of graphene, the iconic atom-thin material made of carbon that was discovered in 2004. Since then, scientists have identified hundreds more of these 2D materials. But it has been particularly difficult to produce 2D sheets of metals, because their atoms have always tended to cluster together to make nanoparticles instead.
[...]
To prepare goldene, the Linköping researchers started with a material containing atomic monolayers of silicon sandwiched between titanium carbide. When they added gold on top of this sandwich, it diffused into the structure and exchanged places with the silicon to create a trapped atom-thick layer of gold (see ‘Gold mining’). They then etched away the titanium carbide to release free-standing goldene sheets that were up to 100 nanometres wide, and roughly 400 times as thin as the thinnest commercial gold leaf, Hultman estimates.
[...]