Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Build Graphene From Scratch, Atom By Atom
MrSeb writes "You've heard of 'designer babies,' the idea that you can customize a baby by altering its DNA, but now a team of researchers from Stanford University and the Department of Energy have meddled around with the very fabric of reality and created the very first 'designer electrons.' The bulk of the universe is made up from just a few dozen elements, and each of these elements is made up of just a few subatomic particles: electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, and so on. For the most part, the properties of every material — its flexibility, strength, conductivity — is governed by the bonds between its constituent atoms, which in turn dictate a molecule's arrangement of electrons. In short, if you can manually move electrons around, you can create different or entirely new materials. That's exactly what Stanford University has done: Using a scanning tunneling microscope, the team of researchers placed individual carbon monoxide molecules on a clean sheet of copper to create 'molecular graphene' — an entirely new substance that definitely isn't graphene, but with electrons that act a lot like graphene (abstract). It is now possible, then, for scientists to create entirely new materials or tweak existing materials — like silicon or copper, or another important element — to make them stronger or more conductive. Where will this particular avenue lead us?"
Is this alchemy?
"Transparent aluminum.... It's all there, but it would take years to figure out the dynamics!"
Who did what now?
Space Elevators.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
Does it mean the Moore's law still got some legs?
It is now possible, then, for scientists to create entirely new materials or tweak existing materials — like silicon or copper, or another important element — to make them stronger or more conductive. Where will this particular avenue lead us?
Nowhere, unless you only want blocks of it 1 or 2 nanometers across, and are prepared to take a few hours to manufacture it.
In this case, a scanning tunnelling microscope is being used by having a single massive (on an atomic scale) probe manipulating single atoms at a time. Until we can control millions of atoms at this degree of resolution AND at the same time (smaller parallel probes, or some fancy trick with complex electrical fields on a single probe tip), this is scientifically interesting, but useless for the bulk manufacture the poster hints at.
Now can Gold from Lead be far behind?
And you thought alchemists were ludicrous?
Not anymore... If only we could understand how magnets worked!
"You've heard of 'designer babies,' the idea that you can customize a baby by altering its DNA"
I have not heard of this. Doesn't the term 'designer baby' refer to selecting an embryo for in vitro fertilisation that has the genes you want? The DNA isn't altered; you just choose the one you want from existing DNA.
What the hell does this guy think he's talking about? The article is interesting but "designer babies"? "The fabric of reality"? Where do you people get this stuff?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
gold, Gold, GOOOOOLD!
"Designer baby" is just a buzzphrase. It serves no purpose other than to derogate people who might want to reduce the role of chance in the genetics of their children. It means whatever the speaker wants it to mean.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Aww man! Now can Gold from Lead be far behind?
Yes, very far. You have to manipulate protons, not electrons, to convert an atom from one element into another element. Sorry, humor has to respect science a little bit. :-)
Wrong! The bulk of the universe -- about 70% -- is made of dark energy and we have no idea what that's made of. Then there's dark matter -- about 25% (no idea what that's made of either) -- while less than 5% is made of normal, barionic matter (electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, and so on).
That's what they should make.
Too bad the government is canceling most of the funding that is going towards moving this type of research forward. The FRIB (Federal Rare Isotopes Beam) project, currently under construction in Michigan had most of its funding cut for the budget this coming year. Congress is claiming that the research is better done in France with the current accelerator (which will be half-way through its useful life when the FRIB is expected to go online).
But hey, why spend money on furthering science and building your ability to be a "thinking" country (we've already given up the ability to be a "making" country), when you can give it to people who just gamble it on the markets and push money around?
With this announcement, essentially something similar to what I've been waiting on for the better part of a decade, I have to ask if this is where identying the Higgs Boson comes into play. By identifying the Higgs, I thought the idea was to complete a working model for a Unified Theory.
Now introduce this experiment and a working model for Unification. We can then create any molecule we see fit, given the appropriate equipment, with any properties we deem necessary. This may sounds like science fiction, but I've always thought this type of breakthrough, is where a 'New Age' of materials, technology, and overall social efficiency, would spawn. Would I be giving away my idea if I proposed some 'molecular suggestion' software based on a complete model of Unification, coupled with some better than most AI, against some statistically applied physics modeling? I hope I'm not the only who's looking for this type of scientific crossroads.
Here's to hoping such a breakthrough occurs sooner, rather than later.
I think the bigger question is, "how would you move this process to a FAB"? I don't think it will happen soon, but it seems to me we would need robotic STMs? Research is continuing... I assume.
Nice generic smaller technology quip, but I think you missed the point of TFA and what the posters you were responding to (hint, they read and understood it). You should actually read it, its more about a change in the understanding of physics than new chips.
I don't think so. The cited and heavily quoted article seems to start with a fundamental misunderstanding of freshman level physics: "the bulk of the universe is made up from just a few dozen elements, and each of these elements is made up of just a few subatomic particles: electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, and so on". Quarks are not subatomic particles, they are the elemental particles that subatomic particles are made from. In other words your proton is made of quarks. That makes phrases like "meddled around with the very fabric of reality" a bit suspicious. Reading the article confirms this suspicion.
If you look at the second citation, the one from real scientists, they are using phrases like "new nanoscale materials with useful electronic properties". So if you only read the fist citation then yes we are on the verge of star fleet manual type science. However if you the second article we are closer to new fabrication technologies.
"... reality".
What a fatuous bunch of crap. This is PR bullspeak, not science. The way that they conflate electrons and molecules (from TFA: "In short, if you can manually move electrons around, you can create different or entirely new materials. Thatâ(TM)s exactly what Stanford University has done: Using a scanning tunneling microscope (the blue point in the image above), the team of researchers placed individual carbon monoxide molecules") pretty much convicts them of ignorance.
Also, this was first done by the researchers from IBM who spelled out "IBM" in individual atoms more than two decades ago now. This story is about some other people who have done the same thing years later and think they deserve everyone's noses crammed up their arses for it. Screw them.
IBM used whole atoms, these guys on the other hand are moving single electrons and manage to get a stable orbit for them around the nucleus. That's quite a large difference. Though I do agree that this has been done before.
No they aren't, at least according to TFA. Let me remind you of the quote, which you seemed to miss in my last post:
>"To make the structure, which Manoharan calls molecular graphene, the scientists use a scanning tunneling microscope to place individual carbon monoxide molecules on a perfectly smooth copper surface."
If that's not good enough for you, this is from the actual abstract on nature.com:
>"Here we report the emergence of Dirac fermions in a fully tunable condensed-matter systemâ"molecular grapheneâ"assembled by atomic manipulation of carbon monoxide molecules over a conventional two-dimensional electron system at a copper surface"
They are clearly manipulating molecules, not even atoms.
"... graphene".
We may not know the best way to make it, but we sure know one that's a hell of a lot simpler and more scalable than assembling it atom by atom, and that's the technique where you pull individual molecular layers off graphite by sticking a piece of sticky tape to it and ripping it off quickly. A chinese factory full of workers doing that all day long will produce a ton of graphene a hell of a lot more quickly and cheaply than anyone with an AFM.
is looking forward to seeing how our masters will maintain scarcity.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
To replicators, of course. Star Trek-style replicators, not Stargate-style replicators, for those of you inclined to think every new technology is going to destroy humanity.
Granted, assembling a few atoms in a lab is a far cry from replicating food, parts, and so forth, but the principle is the same. Fabrication at the sub-atomic level gives us the ability to replicate damned near anything. Once can only imagine how disruptive such a technology will be when things like gold, diamonds, and currency can be perfectly replicated by anyone with access to such a machine.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Yeah, they thought they were getting the fancy "designer electrons". But what they actually got was regular electrons with a fancy label. Because electrons are totally fungible; they're all the same and one's just as good as another.
Considering that the quoted meaning is consistent with the meaning of the word "designer" and your version isn't, I'm going to go with the quoted one. Although that doesn't mean that random media morons blurt out the phrase every five minutes without bothering to think whether it's appropriate to the topic they're talking about....
Well, until atomic force microscopes are a dime a dozen, I don't think that will even be an issue.
Of course it is.
I guess the best we can hope for (and I'm completely serious here) is that this team of researchers from Stanford and the DOE spent a little time doing purification rites and getting their heads straight before undertaking these experiments. For their sake and ours.
From Isaac Newton and Paracelsus, Flamel and Giordano Bruno, Trithemius, Trismegistus, Oppenheimer and right on down to Feynman, the guys who deal in and mess with the fundamentals have known that you've got to get your mind right before you dig in and mess with the noodles of reality. Physics and Math go hand in hand with enlightenment, but enlightenment has drier palms.
Otherwise, you end up like Edward Teller, unhappy, cringing, stabbing people in the back, polishing Ronald Reagan's knob and believing you have to blow up the world to save it.
When they say, "A thing worth doing is a thing worth doing right," I think they mean you have to try to get right in order to be right so you can do right. And if you don't know what I mean, or if you think that's all just a lot of hooey, just go be an engineer, please?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I guess I'm old fashioned' but don't we manipulate electrons a the time? You know... Like e fluorescent light bulb?
I wouldn't call that anything new...
"Tea, Earl Grey, hot"
Table-ized A.I.
It'll get shoveled on down to all the 'important discoveries' warehouse like the Ark did at the end of the movie. There will be no more important discoveries that aren't raped by a corporation first.
So, now we can assemble the molecules, just add in disassembling (or at least being able to read/scan what molecules are present etc.) and we've got beaming technology. Sorry that we'll have to kill you after we copy you (once we've got confirmation that your copy has been assembled at the destination), but the copy probably won't mind.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
they patented the atoms thus they own EVERYTHING. .............PROFIT............. PAY ............THEM............ NOW.
WOOT
I also had to add this line cause the stupid filter doesn't know that caps can be used for emphasus.
Alchemy happens when you change the nucleus of the atom, not the electrons. For example, in a nuclear reactor when you split Uranium or Plutonium and create entirely different daughter atoms which different numbers of protons in the nucleus than the parent had. Or, in fusion when you combine two nuclei into a single daughter nucleus.
Simply arranging atoms without changing what element they are, would not really be alchemy as the term is generally understood.
that or replicators.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
Huh sounds cool maybe we can mess up photosynthesis again and only live to be 11 years old, producing ozone instead as quick fix.
To answer the question, nowhere. Well maybe faster computers, and a few other innovations.
I know someone who just stopped working for a top research facility doing exactly this sort of stuff. This person and this person's colleagues believe that applications certainly won't happen during our lifetimes and may never. There needs to be a greater emphasis on pushing forward the state of experimental results (like this) and less on the theory which is so much farther advanced that it's reached the point of absurdity. Theorists are fond of claiming that these are simply engineering problems, but in my opinion they are just mental masturbators who's hold on reality is tenuous at best. There is a very high chance that much of the theory is worthless because the engineering problems are simply not tractable.
-Fan of economic rationalism.
The journalist is making it harder to understand what is going on.
IANAP but here's how I understand it thanks to google.
First, 85 tesla have been generated for very short instants in the lab so the article is wrong in saying 60 tesla is higher than ever achieved.
Graphene forms a two-dimensional lattice surface like a chicken wire fence.
For each molecule of graphene a single electron sticks out from the surface.
These electrons are free to hop around to other atoms.
In fact they act just like particles that have no mass and can travel at 1% of the speed of light. These quasiparticles are called massless dirac fermions. A fermion is a particle with certain properties, the nucles of a helium atom being one kind of fermion.
Electrons travelling at relativistic speeds is not earth shattering since that is what happens in gold atoms too. But the point is the electrons are free to sweep through the lattice without hindrance, and that if you can control the way the electrons move, you can control the apparent properties of the quasiparticles.
In 2010 Francisco Guinea in Madrid predicted that stretching graphene along all the axes of it crystal structure will make the electrons act as if subjected to a magnetic field.
http://www.gizmag.com/straining-graphene-creates-strong-pseudo-magnetic-fields/15891/
http://physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/pdf/386.Science.329-Levy.pdf
In July 2010 Michael Crommie proved the prediction, by growing bubbles of stretched graphene that stick up like pyramids from the platinum surface they were grown on. The electrons acted as if they were subjected to 300 tesla fields.
This technique works at room temperature.
The paper mentioned by the OP talks about designer Dirac fermions which means that you can create quasiparticles possessing the characteristics you desire by simply moving atoms around so they make electrons move in the way necessary to make the quasiparticles appear to exist. You can thereby freely mess with simulated mass, electrical and magnetic fields, etc. which might be very useful.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7389/full/nature10941.html
The technique used in the OP experiment is low temperature and nanoscale. But based on Crommie's work it should not be hard to imagine processes in the future that could allow similar structures to be built quickly on a larger scale.
This is an exciting a relatively new field of research apparently but breathless reports using terms like designer babies or designer electrons when it is really designer quasiparticles, and saying that the fabric of reality is being messed with, is just distracting and does not help people who are not prepared to dive into the actual research paper to find out what is going on.
I'm pretty sure this is going to lead us to more advanced pRon. Among other things.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Have then changed the "Fabric of space"? No.
Have they created "Designer electrons"? No.
Have they "built molecules" by manually placing "atom by atom"? No, but others have.
Have they created a "cheaper" not-quite-graphene material by placing "individual carbon monoxide molecules on a clean sheet of copper"? Yes, apparently.
No doubt this will lead to interesting and useful technologies but PLEASE... cut down on the fantastic sci-fi bullshit.
When can I buy myself a replicator?
This has nothing to do with "designer babies" or "the fabric of reality". Why do people that have noting relevant to say feel the need to blow their claims up all out of proportion.
I mod the story "-1, stupid".
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
First: Turning another material into gold has already been done. It is just more expensive than natural gold. Done by science (it works, bitches).
Second: What alchemics means (in opposition to modern chemistry) is that, instead of experimenting, repeating experiments, validating theories, you just would get a bunch of philosophical gibberish about the "inherent" qualitites(good/bad for the souls, its "affinity", it is earth, fire or....) of this or that compound, that you need to perform certain mistical ritual before using them and the usual.
Could you explain me which part of TFA is "alchemic"?
In a related note, thinking about what you write before writting it is a good thing, you should try it.
Why can't
Obviously this process is expensive and materials produced at this point would be for research alone. But if the processes can be automated materials with really shocking new abilities will be produced. If we get any benefit in products common to use by the public I'd bet that 25 years before anything at all appears might be a good guess.
Speaking as someone who has done research into corrosion resistance and plating, it doesn't work like that. The corrosion resistance of "gold" plating depends on the performance of the nickel layer underneath. There are many engineering applications for which gold plating is unsuitable. It is good for connectors because its resistance doesn't depend on an oxide layer, unlike chromium. As for gold alloys, don't go there. The metallurgy of gold alloys, except with copper and silver, is not something you would want to have to work with to create corrosion resistant alloys based on strong materials. If there are elements that I would like to see available cheaply, they are the lanthanides, copper, nickel and cobalt. Cheap nickel metal hydride batteries and cheap efficient DC motors along with cheap solar power would do a lot to improve the prospects for an orderly transition to an oil free world. Cheap gold would achieve very little.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
This is what's called (the beginnings of) a replicator; the good kind (tea, earl-grey, hot), not the bad kind (They appear to be replicators, Daniel Jackson).
here i found more information about the topic: http://technieuws.com/
They are simply moving CO molecules around a metal surface. IBM did this back in 1990 and spelled the words IBM by doing this. Fast forward 22 years later, I'm still waiting for NAND gates composed of a few atoms and Star Trek like Replicators. There should be a law that researchers are forbidden to use "right around the corner" or "in a few years" for a "fantastic Sci-Fi device X". Its getting monotonous.
If they can do this then perhaps they can turn water in gas and get the gas prices down since we won't have to pull it out of the ground anymore.
.. now where's my bolt, chord and sphere
I think I read about this 20 years ago, during the first graphene boom, back when all it was used for was STM studies of carbon on metallic surfaces.
Well, we've come full circle on graphene then, what's next?
Perhaps this may lead to the development of Tritanium (Star Trek ships' hull material). Alter the atoms in a sheet of Titanium a bit to make it even stronger...