Gold leaf is thin, but this is atomically thin. The material has now been dubbed “goldene’ because it turns out, if you reduce gold down to a single atom in width, it acts very similarly to graphene.
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LearningTranscript
00:00 Gold leaf, that edible stuff they put on food to make it pricier and more luxurious, is
00:07 super thin, but it's got nothing on this.
00:10 This is a scanning transmission microscopy image of what is essentially a new form of
00:15 gold, a material that is only one atom thick.
00:17 It has now been dubbed goldene, because it turns out if you reduce gold down to a single
00:21 atom in width, it acts very similarly to graphene, with material scientist Shun Kashiwaya saying
00:27 about it, "As you know gold is usually a metal, but if single atom layer thick, the gold can
00:32 become a semiconductor instead."
00:34 Experts say that getting gold into a 2D form factor has long been a challenge, as its particles
00:39 have a tendency to bunch up on their own, and that's why the creation of goldene was
00:43 sort of an accident as well, with the researchers simply wanting to coat titanium silicon carbide
00:48 with gold.
00:49 Instead, the gold replaced the silicon layer when it was exposed to high heat, leaving
00:53 just gold interlaced with titanium and carbon, meaning all they had to do was use metal etching
00:57 acid to remove the remaining titanium and carbon atoms, in the end leaving a single
01:02 layer of gold at the atomic level.
01:05 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:08 (gentle music)