{"id":29169,"date":"2022-12-08T20:26:23","date_gmt":"2022-12-08T21:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/?p=29169"},"modified":"2022-12-08T21:35:42","modified_gmt":"2022-12-08T21:35:42","slug":"adventures-in-nanotechnology-the-case-of-the-metallic-snowflake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/2022\/12\/08\/adventures-in-nanotechnology-the-case-of-the-metallic-snowflake\/","title":{"rendered":"Adventures In Nanotechnology… The Case Of The Metallic Snowflake"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Friday, 9 December 2022, 9:37 am<\/b>
Press Release: University of Auckland<\/a><\/b><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Scientists in New Zealand and Australia working
\nat the level of atoms created something unexpected: tiny
\nmetallic snowflakes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why\u2019s that
\nsignificant? Because coaxing individual atoms to cooperate
\nin desired ways is leading to a revolution in engineering
\nand technology via nanomaterials. (And creating snowflakes
\nis cool.)<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/figure>\n

Nanoscale
\nstructures (a nanometre is one billionth of a metre) can aid
\nelectronic manufacturing, make materials stronger yet
\nlighter, or aid environmental clean-ups by binding to
\ntoxins.<\/p>\n

To create metallic nanocrystals, New Zealand
\nand Australian scientists have been experimenting with
\ngallium, a soft, silvery metal which is used in
\nsemiconductors and, unusually, liquifies at just above room
\ntemperature.<\/p>\n

Their results were just reported in the
\njournal Science<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Professor Nicola Gaston and
\nresearch fellow Dr Steph Lambie, both of Waipapa Taumata
\nRau, University of Auckland, and Dr Krista Steenbergen of Te
\nHerenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington,
\ncollaborated with colleagues in Australia led by Professor
\nKourosh Kalantar-Zadeh at the University of New South
\nWales.<\/p>\n

The Australian team worked in the lab with
\nnickel, copper, zinc, tin, platinum, bismuth, silver
\nand
aluminium, growing metal crystals in a liquid solvent
\nof gallium.<\/p>\n

Metals were dissolved in gallium at high
\ntemperatures. Once cooled, the metallic crystals emerged
\nwhile the gallium remained liquid.<\/p>\n

The New Zealand
\nteam, part of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced
\nMaterials and Nanotechnology, a national Centre of Research
\nExcellence, carried out simulations of molecular dynamics to
\nexplain why differently shaped crystals emerge from
\ndifferent metals. (The government\u2019s Marsden Fund supported
\nthe research.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we are learning is that the
\nstructure of the liquid gallium is very important,\u201d says
\nGaston. \u201cThat\u2019s novel because we usually think of
\nliquids as lacking structure or being only randomly
\nstructured.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interactions between the atomistic
\nstructures of the different metals and the liquid gallium
\ncause differently shaped crystals to emerge, the scientists
\nshowed.<\/p>\n

The crystals included cubes, rods, hexagonal
\nplates and the zinc snowflake shapes. The six-branched
\nsymmetry of zinc, with each atom surrounded by six
\nneighbours at equivalent distances, accounts for the
\nsnowflake design.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn contrast to top-down
\napproaches to forming nanostructure \u2013 by cutting away
\nmaterial \u2013 this bottom-up approaches relies on atoms
\nself-assembling,\u201d says Gaston. \u201cThis is how nature makes
\nnanoparticles, and is both less wasteful and much more
\nprecise than top-down methods.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says the
\nresearch has opened up a new, unexplored pathway for
\nmetallic nanostructures. \u201cThere\u2019s also something very
\ncool in creating a metallic
\nsnowflake!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\u00a9 Scoop Media<\/span><\/a>
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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