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A New Kind of Chemistry
pq writes "Reasearchers at VCU, Pennsylvania State have created "superatoms" of aluminium and iodine that behave like the alkaline earth metals. From the article: "Our production of such a species is a stirring development that may lead to new compounds with a completely new class of chemistry and applications". Another article on Biomedcentral"
I have been waiting for some kind of similar announcement, something that will have some impact in nanotech thinking circles. Although this area of nanotech is completely hyped and misrepresented by every company involved in it.
The goal is to use these clusters as building blocks to tailor the design and formation of materials with selected properties.
They have basically coated aluminium atoms with iodine atoms, and produced a molecule that acts like a huge iodine atom, but with hybrid properties.
In the future 'chemical computing' (not computational chemistry) can be achieved and allowing us to build primitive components of a mass production system (basically a highly iterative and controlled series of reactions, building larger and larger blocks, that progress down a conveyer belt).
Anyway, it sounds good, and I cannot wait until the real application of this becomes app'nt (breaking the current nm barrier in CPU tech so we can hit 10ghz at consumer level).
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Looks like they are more like molecules (or rather metalic latice fragments). Calling them 'super atoms' is a little misleading; it make them sound like a man-made atom when they are not. Ionic-alloys might be better terminology. Interesting though, if the process can be made cheap enough we may be able to mimic the properties of incredibly rare metals and use a man-made substitute in their stead. AE
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In contact with air, aluminum quickly is coated with a layer of aluminum oxide that resists corrosion.
Maybe it's resistant to corrosion because it's already corroded. Oxidization is corrosion!
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Not necessarily a contradiction.
Hydrogen reacts with lots of things, but it's very stable in the sense that it continues to be hydrogen. These clusters may be reactive, but are very stable in the sense that the clusters remain intact with all the same properties of the cluster.
Or at least that's my understanding of what they're trying to say, having not read the article.
That sounds like a better description to me. I agree "super-atoms" is a really bad name. I'm no expert in chemistry so perhaps there is something about these clusters that causes the radical moniker to be inappropriate.
Ben Hocking
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