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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?
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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).
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?
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.
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.
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.