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Molecules Spontaneously Form Honycomb

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the just-a-push-in-the-right-direction dept.

Science Daily is reporting that University of California Researchers have discovered a new process in which molecules assemble into complex patterns without any outside guidance. From the article: "Spreading anthraquinone, a common and inexpensive chemical, on to a flat copper surface, Greg Pawin, a chemistry graduate student working in the laboratory of Ludwig Bartels, associate professor of chemistry, observed the spontaneous formation of a two-dimensional honeycomb network comprised of anthraquinone molecules."

9 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Really cool, but surprising? by QuantumFTL · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is really awesome, however carbon spontaneously forms many different shapes, not the least of which are C60, nanotubes, and graphite (which has a honeycomb shape). As cool as this is, what part of this is "news?"

    1. Re:Really cool, but surprising? by damian+cosmas · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think it's kind of silly, but getting something to self-assemble cooled in liquid nitrogen is a little different than the "spontaneous" formation of fullerenes and whatnot in an electric arc furnace, since lots of things happen spontaneously at 1800 K and the yields are piss-poor. Still, this is nothing new. Zeolites have been self-assembling with large pore sizes for a while now.

    2. Re:Really cool, but surprising? by dwhitman · · Score: 4, Insightful
      carbon spontaneously forms many different shapes, not the least of which are C60, nanotubes, and graphite (which has a honeycomb shape). As cool as this is, what part of this is "news?"
      All the examples you give are covalently bonded molecular structures, where the observed regularity is derived from the symmetry of the orbitals forming the bonds.

      What's cool about this (as near as I can tell from the junior high-school level article) is that the structures are supramolecular, many orders of magnitude larger than the anthraquinone molecules they are made of. The structures seems to be held together only by (weak) van der Waals interactions between the molecules, influenced by the copper substrate. This is interesting and unusual, if you know enough chemistry to appreciate it.

      I'd love to see x-ray diffraction of these layers, to see how the anthraquinones are packing, and how the symmetry of the molecules is reflected in the much larger honeycomb.

  2. Re:crystals by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This doesn't seem any more unusual than a crystal lattice.
    Its just doing it in another molecule.

    I'm with the GP, its not earth shattering.

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  3. Re:importance? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This issue seems to be the scale of the self-assembled structure, and its simple origin. The comparison with a ribosome is not to the point. Ribosomes have evolved over about a billion years. In this case, the metal substrate and organic molecule are off-the-shelf, not proprietary. Also, the symmetry group is different from that of nanotubes or buckyballs. Third, the size of the channels makes them suitable for applications such a 3-D nanoelectronic circuitry.

    -- Jonathan Vos Post

  4. Crappy article by littleghoti · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The article is overly simplified, and reads like the researchers are blowing their own trumpet. If you have a clean metal surface, pretty much anything will stick to it. This will form a stable layer with a regular structure. Whilst it may be the first time anyone has seen anything that big, I would doubt that it is an entirely new mechanism as they claim.

  5. Re:Honycomb? by pembo13 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I am pretty sure that I wasn't the only one who knew the correct spelling, but didn't notice the mistake.

    --
    "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
  6. Saturday morning cartoons by Nick+Driver · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If the moderation of the above four comments is any indication, Slashdot is populated by the same demographic which watches Saturday morning cartoons.

    Nope. Rather, Slashdot is populated mostly by the same demographic who grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons many, many years ago before they all turned into lame crap.

    1. Re:Saturday morning cartoons by dfenstrate · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ever catch one of your old favorites replaying on TV?

      They're crap. What we watched was crap then, and what kids watch nowadays is crap as well.

      It's just that we were kids and couldn't tell it was crap, so we developed fond memories of it.

      --
      Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.