Scientists have used the smallest possible bits of diamonds to assemble electrical wires just three atoms wide. This could pave the way for fabrics that generate electricity.
Putting the various types of atoms in a LEGO style, the new technology can be used to build tunu wires for a range of applications including optoelectronic devices that employ electricity and light and superconducting materials that conduct electricity without loss.
Each block consists of a diamondoid, the smallest bit of diamond, attached to sulphur and copper atoms.
Like LEGO blocks, they only fit together in certain ways that are determined by their size and shape.
The copper and sulphur atoms form a conductive wire in the middle, and the diamondoids form an insulating outer shell.
There are many ways to self assemble, the first one shown to make a nanowire with a solid, crystalline core that has good electronic properties is this.
The needle-like wires have a semiconducting core, a combination of copper and sulphur known as a chalcogenide surrounded by the attached diamondoids, which form an insulating shell.
The size is important because the material that exists in just one or two dimensions as atomic scale dots, wires or sheets can have extraordinary properties compared to same material made in bulk.
The new method allows researchers to assemble those materials with atom-by-atom precision and control.
The diamondoids they used as assembly tools are tiny, interlocking cages of carbon and hydrogen.
Found naturally in petroleum fluids, they are extracted and separated by size and geometry in a SLAC laboratory.
Diamondoids are strongly attracted to each other, through what are known as forces.
They started with the smallest possible diamondoids, single cages that contain just 10 carbon atoms and attached a sulphur atom to each.
The building blocks then drifted toward each other, due to van der Waals attraction and attached to the tip of the wire.
Know More About Johannes van der Waals- Dutch scientist.
- Fields: Theoretical physics, thermodynamics
- Institutions: University of Amsterdam
- Alma mater: University of Leiden
Known for:
- Molecular physics (Molecular theory)
- Theorem of corresponding states
- Van der Waals equation of state (Real gas law)
- Van der Waals forces
- Van der Waals radius
- Van der Waals surface
- Van der Waals molecule
