They are creating a wonderful material that can replace graphene. This is a thin two-dimensional layer of gold.
This material was designed in “2D” because it is extremely thin.
Graphene has a number of amazing properties. It has recently become a semiconductor and they have also found ways to fuse it with diamonds to create an amazing material. However, in turn, they developed an even more amazing technology, based not so much on graphene, but on another material, namely, a very valuable metal for thousands of years of History: gold.
The paper recently published in the journal Nature Synthesis showing how they did this is truly amazing, and this new material has a very catchy name: Golden in an explicit reference to graphene. Let’s figure out what its properties are and why it is absolutely futuristic.
Goldennew metal that could outperform graphene
For the first time, a group of scientists created gold foil one atom thick. This is truly an amazing milestone for the experts who named it. gold, that is, goldeno, a clear hint of graphene. Researchers at Linköping University in Sweden believe this could be a very useful technology for recycling carbon dioxide and producing hydrogen, as well as producing highly valuable chemicals. This could open up a whole range of truly useful applications that could help various industries take off, as is the case with the creation of green hydrogen. Anyway, gold becomes a semiconductortherefore, it can compete with graphene.
So far, previous attempts to create these one-atom-thick gold sheets have failed. Gold tends to clump, making this goal very difficult to achieve. However, by studying the methods of Japanese blacksmiths, they managed to do this. To make this material, they used a three-dimensional base in which gold was embedded between layers of titanium and carbon, ensuring that it did not stick together as easily. To this combination we add Murakami reagent which is used in Japanese forging to remove carbon residues and change the color of steel.
All this is done in complete darkness to prevent the formation of cyanide, which dissolves gold. Moreover, the discovery was relatively accidental as they were working on other uses for gold and other materials, but when they saw that it had been achieved, they focused their efforts on it.
Received gold so good that it has not three dimensions, but twoand has some very interesting potential applications, especially in the study of graphene and water purification. In addition, it can also be used for new Internet networks and other advanced communications. So they want to apply these advances to other noble metals to see if they can find other uses that will advance research in other areas.
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