New form of gold with a thickness of one atom

What would happen if a piece of gold was just as thin as one atom?

Throughout the centuries, goldsmiths of all ages have sought to carve gold into ever more elaborate shapes. However, plating gold so thinly is always a challenge, due to technological limitations.

Science has successfully created a new form of gold that is only 1 atom thin. (Illustrative photo: Getty).

Until now, modern chemistry-based methods have finally produced an impossibly thin form of gold material, with a thickness of just one atom.

This is considered a breakthrough in the materials industry . "If you create an extremely thin material, something extraordinary happens, just like with graphene ," said Shun Kashiwaya, a materials scientist at Linköping University in Sweden.

It also has some interesting properties, never before seen in three-dimensional forms of gold. According to Shun Kashiwaya, the same thing with graphene - the world's lightest material - may also happen with gold.

"As you know, gold is considered a metal, but if it is only one atomic layer thick, gold can become a semiconductor , " Kashiwaya explained.

Sticking closely to the naming conventions of materials science, the researchers decided to name this new two-dimensional material goldene .

The new form of gold was observed under a microscope. (Photo: Nature Synt).

What makes goldene so special is that gold was once considered difficult, or impossible, to form in a 2-D configuration , due to its tendency to clump together.

Previous efforts have succeeded in creating a thin sheet of gold, just a few atoms thick, or a single layer sandwiched on top of another material.

Experts say that gold is inherently a very good conductor of electricity. However, if the element is in the form of a 2-dimensional sheet as in the new material, the atoms will have 2 free bonds, giving them the additional property of becoming a semiconductor - the ability to conduct electricity between conductors. and insulators.

This capability is very useful for related manufacturing industries, as the material's electrical conductivity can be adjusted, to suit each specific application.

Combining this material with the properties of semiconductors also opens up entirely new ways we can apply it, such as water filtration, communications and chemical production.