{"id":31890,"date":"2022-12-20T20:39:03","date_gmt":"2022-12-20T21:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/?p=31890"},"modified":"2022-12-20T22:37:34","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T22:37:34","slug":"nanotech-scientists-created-something-unexpected-tiny-metallic-snowflakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/2022\/12\/20\/nanotech-scientists-created-something-unexpected-tiny-metallic-snowflakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Nanotech Scientists Created Something Unexpected: Tiny Metallic Snowflakes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nano<\/p>\n

Nano-scale snowflake from Gallium solvent. Credit: Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

Adventures in Nanotech: Growing a Metallic Snowflake<\/h3>\n

Scientists working at the level of atoms are manipulating metals, opening up possibilities for creating new materials.<\/em><\/p>\n

Working at the level of atoms, scientists in New Zealand and Australia created something unexpected: tiny metallic snowflakes.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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

Nanoscale structures (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter or about 50,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair) can aid electronic manufacturing, make materials stronger yet lighter, or aid environmental clean-ups by binding to toxins.<\/p>\n

To create metallic nanocrystals, New Zealand and Australian scientists have been conducting experiments with gallium, a soft, silvery metal that is used in semiconductors and has the unusual property of liquifying at slightly above room temperature.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Their results were reported on December 8 in the journal Science.<\/i><\/p>\n

Professor Nicola Gaston and research fellow Dr. Steph Lambie, both of Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, and Dr. Krista Steenbergen of Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, collaborated with colleagues in Australia led by Professor Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh at the University of New South Wales.<\/p>\n

The Australian team worked in the lab with nickel, copper, zinc, tin, platinum, bismuth, silver, and aluminum. Metals were dissolved in gallium at high temperatures. Once cooled, the metallic crystals emerged while the gallium remained liquid.<\/p>\n

\"Growing<\/p>\n

Credit: University of Auckland<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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

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

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

The crystals included cubes, rods, hexagonal plates, and the zinc snowflake shapes. The six-branched symmetry of zinc, with each atom<\/p>\n

An atom is the smallest component of an element. It is made up of protons and neutrons within the nucleus, and electrons circling the nucleus.<\/div>\n

” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{"attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"}]”>atom<\/span> surrounded by six neighbors at equivalent distances, accounts for the snowflake design.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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

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

Reference: \u201cLiquid metal synthesis solvents for metallic crystals\u201d by Shuhada A. Idrus-Saidi, Jianbo Tang, Stephanie Lambie, Jialuo Han, Mohannad Mayyas, Mohammad B. Ghasemian, Francois-Marie Allioux, Shengxiang Cai, Pramod Koshy, Peyman Mostaghimi, Krista G. Steenbergen, Amanda S. Barnard, Torben Daeneke, Nicola Gaston and Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh, 8 December 2022, Science<\/em>.
DOI: 10.1126\/science.abm2731<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>.large-mobile-banner-1-multi-187{border:none!important;display:block!important;float:none!important;line-height:0;margin-bottom:15px!important;margin-left:auto!important;margin-right:auto!important;margin-top:15px!important;max-width:100%!important;min-height:250px;min-width:250px;padding:0;text-align:center!important}<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nano-scale snowflake from Gallium solvent. Credit: Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland Adventures in Nanotech:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31890"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31890"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31898,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31890\/revisions\/31898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}