World's Thinnest Gold Sheet Is Just 1mm Thick; Here's How Researchers Created It

The world of science has been making new developments now and then. Some recent reports have suggested that scientists have formed a free-standing sheet of gold that is only one atom thick for the very first time. It is known as Goldene and has made gold the first metal to be made into a freestanding 2D sheet. This has turned out to be a huge creation for scientists, as it opens a lot of doors in the future for gold. This has not been the first time that a 2D material has been created. Earlier, scientists discovered graphene in 2004, which is an atom-thin material made of carbon. Since then, hundreds of 2D materials have been identified.

However, creating atom-thin metallic sheets has been a challenge for many researchers. This is mainly because metals tend to stick together and form nanoparticles instead of a 2D material. As a result, the creation of goldene has become the first free-standing 2D metal. As reported in Nature Synthesis, materials physicist Lars Hultman of Linköping University in Sweden says, “Goldene holds promise as a great catalyst because it’s much more economically viable than thicker, three-dimensional gold.”

To create Goldene, scientists first sandwiched an atomic monolayer of silicon between layers of titanium carbide. When the gold started depositing on the top of the sandwich structure, the atoms of the gold diffused into the material and replaced the silicon atoms. This helped in forming a single layer of gold atoms. Then, the scientists removed the layer of titanium carbide, forming a single, standing structure of one-atom-thick layer of gold. The whole process was done using a chemical called Murakami’s reagent, which is used by Japanese people to make katanas and high-quality knives.

The development of goldene will turn out to be a huge creation in the world. Lars Hultman has said that if a more refined goldene is created, it will allow scientists to use less gold in electronics and chemical reactions. Apart from that, goldene also has some exotic properties that are found in other 2D materials.