Molecules Spontaneously Form Honeycomb Network Featuring Pores Of
Unprecedented Size.
UC Riverside researchers have discovered a new way in which nature
creates complex patterns: the assembly of molecules with no guidance
from an outside source. Potential applications of the finding are
paints, lubricants, medical implants, and processes where
surface-patterning at the scale of molecules is desired.
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.
The finding, reported in the Aug. 18 issue of Science, describes a new
mechanism by which complex patterns are generated at the nanoscale – 0.1
to 100 nanometers in size, a nanometer being a billionth of a meter –
without any need for expensive processes such as lithography.
"We know that some of the most striking phenomena in nature, like the
colors on a butterfly wing, come about by the regular arrangement of
atoms and molecules," said Pawin, the first author of the paper. "But
what physical and chemical processes guide their arrangement?
Anthraquinone showed us how such patterns can form easily and
spontaneously."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060818014819.htm
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