Clusters of gold atoms form peculiar pyramidal shape

07-Jan-2020 - Clusters composed of a few atoms tend to be spherical. They are usually organized in shells of atoms around a central atom. This is the case for many elements, but not for gold! Experiments and advanced computations have shown that freestanding clusters of twenty gold atoms take on a pyramidal ...

Secret messages hidden in light-sensitive polymers

06-Sep-2019 - DNA is a long chemical sequence that carries genetic information. Inspired by this biological system, in recent years many research teams have been exploring how to store and then decode information within synthetic macromolecules, also called polymers. In a leap forward in this field, ...

Scientists create the world's thinnest gold

08-Aug-2019 - Scientists at the University of Leeds have created a new form of gold which is just two atoms thick - the thinnest unsupported gold ever created. The researchers measured the thickness of the gold to be 0.47 nanometres - that is one million times thinner than a human finger nail. The material is ...

Applying precious metal catalysts economically

17-May-2019 - Precious metal nanoparticles of platinum and gold are excellent catalysts. But they are expensive and rare. This new method makes it possible to save material. Researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the Fritz Haber Institute Berlin have developed a new method of using rare and expensive ...

Resolving the 'invisible' gold puzzle

Arsenic aids formation of giant gold deposits

03-May-2019 - The Carlin-type gold deposits in Nevada, USA, are the origin of five percent of the global production and 75 percent of the US production of gold. In these deposits, gold does not occur in the form of nuggets or veins, but is hidden - together with arsenic - in pyrite, also known as 'fool's ...

Golden Ball in a Golden Cage

"Golden fullerene": ligand-protected nanocluster made of 32 gold atoms

25-Mar-2019 - Researchers have synthesized a tiny structure from 32 gold atoms. This nanocluster has a core of 12 gold atoms surrounded by a shell of 20 additional gold atoms. As the scientists report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the unusual stability of this cluster results from electronic interactions ...

Hand-knitted Molecules

Chemistry at very small scales

22-Jan-2019 - Molecules are usually formed in reaction vessels or laboratory flasks. An Empa research team has now succeeded in producing molecules between two microscopically small, movable gold tips – in a sense as a "hand-knitted" unique specimen. The properties of the molecules can be monitored in real ...

Rare metals from e-waste

What happens to our ressources?

14-Jan-2019 - This year, beautifully wrapped laptops, mobile phones or even new TV sets lay under numerous Christmas trees. They are enthusiastically put into use – and the old electronic devices are disposed of. The e-waste contains resources such as neodymium, indium and gold. What happens to the valuable ...

Carrying and releasing nanoscale cargo with 'nanowrappers'

Nanocubes for biomedicine, catalysis and beyond

08-Jan-2019 - This holiday season, scientists at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN)--a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory--have wrapped a box of a different kind. Using a one-step chemical synthesis method, they engineered hollow metallic ...

Gold Recycling

Selective dissolution of elemental gold from multi-metal sources in organic solutions

17-Dec-2018 - “Urban mining”, the recycling of precious metals from electronic gadgets, becomes ever more important, although processes that are both efficient and environmentally benign are still scarce. An international team of scientists has now looked deeper into gold dissolution, in particular, how ...