Is there any material that if you can create a layer one atom thick doesn't have amazing new properties? And what ever happened to Buckyballs?
Playing with graphene? All the cool kids are using TIN – atom-thick sheets of stanene
Researchers at Stanford have laid down the first atom-thick sheet of tin, and it has the potential to revolutionize electronics thanks to its unique power propagation properties. The material has been dubbed stanene, a contraction of the Latin word for tin "stannum" and the "ene" suffix used for 2D materials. It does for the …
-
-
Tuesday 4th August 2015 22:44 GMT cray74
Law of Materials Science
"Is there any material that if you can create a layer one atom thick doesn't have amazing new properties? "
It's a law of materials science that if a new material is discovered - like a new blend of cotton-polyester lint and skin grease from your navel - then a materials scientist will publish a paper speculating about its potential as a superconductor and/or an extremely strong substance.
I get three materials journals a month. At least one will have an announcement like this annually. First it was buckyballs, then carbon nanotubes, then titanium diboride, then graphene, then stannene, and there another dozen or so I've blurred out.
-
Tuesday 4th August 2015 21:02 GMT fortran
Picking Nits: TIN versus Tin
Spelling out the element in uppercase is not correct, and is less than useful when the font you are using does not employ arms across the top and bottom for the uppercase 'i'. Which means it gets mistaken for a lowercase 'L', and the number '1'.
Is the person talking about Tin (the element), TiN (titanium nitride), TlN (Thallium nitride doesn't exist, but Tl3N does). It isn't as bad as writing about lead, which usually causes me to write about lead (Pb) to reinforce that I am talking about the metal, and not some form of graphite.
One thing I find interesting about Tin, is that just by changing the vowel, you find how many stable isotopes Tin has (ten), which is the most of any element. Of course, then things like double beta minus decay come along and turn some of the "stable" isotopes into unstable (but very long lived) isotopes.
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
-
Tuesday 4th August 2015 21:37 GMT Dave 32
Crystalline structure
What crystalline structure are they attempting? Tin normally has two common allotropes (beta/white, and alpha/gray), although two other allotropes exist at higher temperatures/pressures. Given that the crystalline structure can dramatically affect electron conduction properties, it may not be all that surprising that they're not seeing what they hoped to see. I really have to wonder if what they've deposited has been more of a single atom thickness of an amorphous layer of Tin, rather than a two dimensional crystalline structure of Tin. More analysis/details would be required, though.
Dave
-
-
Wednesday 5th August 2015 13:27 GMT dajames
And, indeed, 3D materials
... stanene, a contraction of the Latin word for tin "stannum" and the "ene" suffix used for 2D materials.
The "-ene" ending in Chemistry usually denotes a hydrocarbon molecule containing carbo-carbon double bonds, such as ethene (formerly known as ethylene), propene (popylene), benzene, etc. The ending persists in polymers made from these molecules, as in polythene, polypropylene, etc., all of which are very much 3D compounds.
Graphene seems to have got its name as a formation from graphite and the -ene ending, perhaps taken from benzene (the structure of graphene is that of an atom-thick layer of graphite, which is effectively a 2D polymer of benzene molecules).
Graphene seems to be the exemplar, here, so I'd say that stannene was formed from the Latin stannum following the example of graphene, rather than pretending that the -ene suffix belongs only to 2D materials.
-
Thursday 6th August 2015 17:39 GMT fortran
The no longer stable isotopes
Sn-112 undergoes double electron capture (somewhere less than 1E21 year half life), Sn-124 undergoes double beta decay (somewhere greater than 1E21 year half life), and Sn-122 has people suspecting it also undergoes double beta decay.
Leaving tin with 7 stable isotopes.
A source for this information is Jefferson Lab. A lot of older web data shoes all 3 isotopes listed as stable.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
