Researchers Create Glass Just 3 Atoms Thick 160
sciencehabit writes "Researchers have created the world's thinnest pane of glass. The glass, made of silicon and oxygen, formed accidentally when the scientists were making graphene, an atom-thick sheet of carbon, on copper-covered quartz. They believe an air leak caused the copper to react with the quartz, which is also made of silicon and oxygen, producing a glass layer with the graphene. The glass is a mere three atoms thick — the minimum thickness of silica glass—which makes it two-dimensional. The team notes that the structure 'strikingly resembles' a diagram drawn by a glass theorist attempting to unravel its structure back in 1932. Such ultra-thin glass could be used in semiconductor or graphene transistors." See Nano Letters for an abstract (and another picture) to the paywalled article.
Just wait until Apple hear about this (Score:5, Funny)
And in related news, iPad 4 rumored to be just 2mm thick.
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And in related news, iPad 4 rumored to be just 2mm thick.
Too fat. I'm waiting for the iPad 5, rumoured to be 5 atoms thick.
Sucker. (Score:3, Funny)
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iPad X will be three atoms thick, with a protective coating of Higgs bosons on both sides, hand made by people in China with desktop LHCs.
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iPad X will be three atoms thick, with a protective coating of Higgs bosons on both sides, hand made by people in China with desktop LHCs.
wouldn't they be SHCs?
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Of course not. They're colliding large hadrons.
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It slices, it dices, it chops!
Next week, Ginsu sues Apple.
Re:Just wait until Apple hear about this (Score:5, Insightful)
Next week, Ginsu sues Apple.
No, it will be Apple that sues Ginsu.
I still get a kick out of how they patented the magnetic connection for their power supplies, when my grandma's deep fryer had that exact same feature 30 years ago
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I just don't understand why they make them so thin. Thin brittle things tend to snap in half like crackers.
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Style, baby, style...
Serious question: (Score:2)
What's the chemical difference between regular glass and Gorilla Glass? How thin could you make Gorilla Glass? How strong woud it be at its thinnest?
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Gorilla Glass is made out of gorillas, like Girl Scout cookies.
Re:Serious question: (Score:5, Funny)
Girl Scout cookies are made out of gorillas?
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And baby powder.
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Soon we'll have ot worry about getting papercuts from our non-paper tablets!.
Two-dimensional? (Score:5, Insightful)
The glass is a mere three atoms thick — the minimum thickness of silica glass—which makes it two-dimensional.
It's not two dimensional if it has a measurable thickness, which you stated in that same sentence. Unless you have a different definition of "two dimensional" than the rest of us.
Re:Two-dimensional? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps it just had a bland personality?
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The glass could be described as "wooden".
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Topographically speaking, a cow is a torus. Astrologically speaking, it's a Taurus.
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Can't be a standard torus. You forgot about the nostrils.
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Topologically, not topographically. Topographically, cows are oval brown spots, but you have to zoom way in to see them.
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I thought the right word, but my fingers weren't listening :-)
Re:Two-dimensional? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not two dimensional if it has a measurable thickness, which you stated in that same sentence. Unless you have a different definition of "two dimensional" than the rest of us.
Someone posted that same criticism in the article. Here is someone's reply (again, from the comments). I'm not a chemist or physicist, but what they say sounds reasonable:
Hi Heather - fair enough, it's not 2D as in the mathematical concept, but 2D has a physical meaning as well - the thinnest version of a material. Because the silicon and oxygen atoms don't lay flat, glass needs a minimum of three layers of atoms (two silicon and one oxygen) to form a chemically stable sheet. Inside some of these technically 3D ultrathin materials, the electrons behave like their world is two dimensional.
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It's not two dimensional if it has a measurable thickness, which you stated in that same sentence. Unless you have a different definition of "two dimensional" than the rest of us.
Someone posted that same criticism in the article. Here is someone's reply (again, from the comments). I'm not a chemist or physicist, but what they say sounds reasonable:
Hi Heather - fair enough, it's not 2D as in the mathematical concept, but 2D has a physical meaning as well - the thinnest version of a material. Because the silicon and oxygen atoms don't lay flat, glass needs a minimum of three layers of atoms (two silicon and one oxygen) to form a chemically stable sheet. Inside some of these technically 3D ultrathin materials, the electrons behave like their world is two dimensional.
Ok, I can accept that.
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The concept of 2D is usable in more than just a mathematical context. In other situations it just means "planar".
The reek you're experiencing is a matter of your own perception rather than something objective. If you over-apply your areas of knowledge, you're being a nerd. A thing is "wrong" if it doesn't conform to the systems you know? You're probably just ignorant of other systems.
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That's hot.
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http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347 [newgrounds.com]
It has a size, pal. (scroll left)
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Space doesn't get that small. Anything smaller than the Planck length can't be measured in any way that is meaningful.
Granted, the radius of an electron is several orders of magnitude larger than the Planck length.
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Space doesn't get that small. Anything smaller than the Planck length can't be measured in any way that is meaningful.
Granted, the radius of an electron is several orders of magnitude larger than the Planck length.
Planck is orders of magnitude larger than that.
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No, because at smaller than Planck length, the concept of length starts to get fuzzy and weird. The idea of dimensions at the size also gets weird.
I'm not a physicist, but from what I can tell, distance itself becomes meaningless at that size. If you don't have distance, you don't have dimensions.
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That's the stoichiometric ratio, but glass is a framework, not a collection of individual SiO2 molecules.
Re:Two-dimensional? (Score:5, Informative)
I believe they're calling it two dimensional because it's the minimum thickness possible, so for practical purposes, the thickness is equal to a single point. You can argue semantics all you want, but if you were to "travel" on a glass sheet, you would only be able to go along the X axis or Y axis - there is no ability to travel along a Z axis that is only a single point.
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Thats just it atoms have measurable sizes therefore it cant be a single point.
To put it in perspective if you look at the solar system from the side since it is only one planet thick then it is only a point.
Atoms have orbits wuth measurable distancesunderstanding those distance is a huge part of engineering on that level.
It can never be 2D. Thinking it as such limits understanding.
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Yes, atoms have a measurable size and all that, but from a *practical* perspective, it's a single point in thickness. As another posted quoted, the atoms behave as if they're in a two dimensional environment. Mathematical concepts don't always translate well into the physical world, but it helps to think of something as being two dimensional if it behaves as if its truly two dimensional.
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More importantly, it is so thin it is transparent!! ;-)
Re:Two-dimensional? (Score:4, Informative)
The glass is a mere three atoms thick — the minimum thickness of silica glass—which makes it two-dimensional.
It's not two dimensional if it has a measurable thickness, which you stated in that same sentence. Unless you have a different definition of "two dimensional" than the rest of us.
Your question can be answered in two ways. First, in the materials science community, it's common to denote a material or chunk of material that has a very high aspect ratio, for instance very large in one or two dimensions and small in size on the order of the atomic scale in the remaining directions as effectively one- and two-dimensional. In fact, quantum dots are thought of in materials science as generally zero-dimensional, even though they most certainly have more than one atom (and even if they comprised a single atom, the electron cloud extends in three dimensions). So, as far as the materials science and electron microscopy fields are concerned, this is two-dimensional.
Second, you tend to get your paper published in fancier journals and grab more headlines by having sensational things such as 2D (in this case) or quantum or some such buzzword in your title these days.
Re:Two-dimensional? (Score:5, Funny)
It's two dimensional, in that the graph of the atomic bonds is a flat, 2 dimensional graph. That's not "a different definition ... than the rest of us", that's called context. It's the definition a chemist would normally use. If you're trying to prove your brilliance by pointing out that the whole universe has nothing physical that is infinitely thin, sorry, but we stopped giving away Nobel prizes for that. At least four people basically modded you insightful for pointing out that atoms are not infinitely small - that makes Slashdot clearly three dimensional, because we have something infinitely thick around here.
Re:Two-dimensional? (Score:5, Informative)
From a post by the author at TFA:
"Inside some of these technically 3D ultrathin materials, the electrons behave like their world is two dimensional."
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And then it would be interesting to see what properties this thin wafer actually has. There's a chance that this can behave in a different way compared to ordinary glass.
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The glass is a mere three atoms thick — the minimum thickness of silica glass—which makes it two-dimensional.
It's not two dimensional if it has a measurable thickness, which you stated in that same sentence. Unless you have a different definition of "two dimensional" than the rest of us.
The space it occupies is certainly 3 dimensional but that doesn't stop it from having properties that only exist in 2 dimensions, such as: if you take this bit off the "top" it is also missing from the "bottom"... To a scientist/researcher, this is an important distinction when the applications all come from combining layers of certain materials. Would you say the visible surface of a piece of paper is a 3 dimensional one? You could answer yes, and you would be pedantically correct, but for any practical
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In the sense of chemical bonds and structure, it is primarily limited to two degrees of freedom, and so, is two dimensional. Much like we call a photograph two dimensional even though photographic paper has a thickness.
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The glass is a mere three atoms thick — the minimum thickness of silica glass—which makes it two-dimensional.
It's not two dimensional if it has a measurable thickness, which you stated in that same sentence. Unless you have a different definition of "two dimensional" than the rest of us.
It can't be made thinner and remain glass, so within the context of being glass, it is essentially two dimensional.
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It can be treated as 2D in some models, because the structure along one direction is simple enough to be treated as an ignorable direction. Similarly, some aspects of chemistry that occurs in a lipid bilayer can be treated as 2D, not because there is no thickness, but because the thickness isn't a significant degree of freedom for the configurations of molecules in the surface.
Another common reason to make use of a 2D physical model is when one dimension is very large (ideally infinite) and uniform compared
Re:Two-dimensional? (Score:4, Insightful)
The glass is a mere three atoms thick — the minimum thickness of silica glass—which makes it two-dimensional.
It's not two dimensional if it has a measurable thickness, which you stated in that same sentence. Unless you have a different definition of "two dimensional" than the rest of us.
Really? Graphene is 0.34 nm thick, and I'm quite certain that is a 2 dimensional material. In terms of graphene it's 3 dimensional after 3 layers. So the measurable thickness argument isn't valid
Graphene is most certainly not .34 nm thick. What you are quoting is the equilibrium spacing between one graphene sheet and the next in crystalline graphite. The true "thickness" of graphene is hard to gauge, actually. If you take the standard model of quantum mechanics, the carbon atoms within graphene are point particles, and therefore have no thickness. It is reasonable, then, to measure the extent of the electron clouds from the carbon. Since the electron clouds are statistical formulations, they theoretically extend to infinity. However, because I'm a materials scientist and not some fancy physicist with a deep, quantitative understanding of electron orbital theory, I would say a good guess is to say that the radius of the electron cloud around a particular atom is about equal to half the bond length between one carbon and the next. In this case, about 0.071 nm.
So if I were pressed to give an answer as to the thickness of a graphene sheet, not that it would generally matter in any context I'd think of, I'd call it 0.142 nm thick.
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That's always a fun idea to mull over.
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It isn't 2 Dimensional PERIOD
Why not? Is the space we live in not 3 dimensional if there are higher spatial dimensions?
OH yay (Score:2)
More glass cellphones with easy to break screens and backs!
Re:OH yay (Score:5, Funny)
More glass cellphones with easy to break screens and backs!
Easy?!? I've pounded on these things with my finger when they don't .. do .. what .. I .. effing .. want I assume you are wearing metal gauntlets, Sir Lumpy of Oatmealshire.
How tall are you? (Score:1)
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My wife dropped hers from chest height, (Probably around 4 feet, she's a fairly tall woman) onto a a train track rail. We were fully expecting to have our next stop be the AT&T store, but the phone was completely undamaged. I'm not saying they're indestructible, but they seem study enough for day to day use.
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My wife dropped hers from chest height, (Probably around 4 feet, she's a fairly tall woman) onto a a train track rail
And a train ran over it?
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You must have never dropped an iPhone 4/S from a foot up on something that isn't memory foam.
Try leaving it on top of the car and then driving away -- hearing a clatter -- thinking 'um where's the phone?' and going back to find it -- fully functional, just some case scratches. Done it not, once, but twice.
BTW, there's some great news on Alzheimers Research in a following news post. Hope they get this sorted before I really need it. Ok.. I have the phone, but where's the car?
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I did that once. I couldn't find it. I did find the rubber case cover though, and gave it to the clerk at Radio Shack (she had an iPhone) when I bought my Android. That rubber case cover was why the phone didn't fly off 'til I was going 75 down highway 412.
I missed my contacts, but other than that I didn't miss the phone. My HTC has a plastic case cover, so maybe next time I leave my phone on the car it'll fall off before I'm out of the parking lot.
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I've dropped my iPhone 4 from 5' up and watched it bounce down half a flight of concrete steps to no ill effect. On the other hand, my girlfriend had hers fall 6" from her breast pocket while she was bending over to pick up her car keys and the screen complete shattered. They build these things out of some pretty amazing materials and they do their best to make them hardy, but when it comes down to it you are still rolling the dice when you drop one.
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Your fingers are fleshy sausages. That is why it does not break.
and no I have not worn gauntlets while using my iphone cince they went out of style in California. Nobody wears gauntlets after June, it's a fashion faux pas to do so.
you are supposed wear fingerless gloves made of silk after june, thus the lack of breakage on glass phones.
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I usually have to drop mine from 4 feet up onto tile to break them. I'm not sure what could be done to make them survive that reliably and still fit in my pocket.
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I work with him, he breaks about 6 a week, he refuses to stop putting them in his shirt pocket. Problem is IT does not realize that we have completely ran through the stock of 27 iphones we had in case of breakage.
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I'm thinking that the tract-home builders will start using this new glass for the windows in the cheapass houses they build...
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How about sound though? When we put in the new dual-pane windows at the previous house we had a marked drop in external sound inside the house.
As close together as many modern tract homes are, I wouldn't want to hear my neighbor fart like I fear would be the case.
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For some reason, you made me picture your house surrounded by your neighbor's very special stereo system preparing to annoy you greatly drawn in a sort of Dr. Seuss meets Mad Magazine style.
Finally, a practical use for the sub-woofer.
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That's why I want a Razr -- gorilla glass front and kevlar back. Too bad you have to get on T-Mobile to get one, though :(
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You mean Verizon? If it was on T-Mobile I'd be very tempted to get one.
Also? (Score:1)
"...an air leak caused the copper to react with the quartz, which is also made of silicon and oxygen,"
"Also"?
Copper is not made of silicon and oxygen. Graphite is not made of silicon and oxygen. What do you mean by "also"?
Re:Also? (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz [wikipedia.org] "It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO2."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_dioxide [wikipedia.org] "Silica is used primarily in the production of glass for windows, drinking glasses, beverage bottles, and many other uses."
Glass and quartz.
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Glass and quartz.
Glass that consists of nothing other than silicon and oxygen-- chemically known as "silica"-- is referred to as "quartz".
When they say they grew the material in "quartz" tubes, they mean: tubes made of silica glass. (Mineralogists reserve the word for only crystalline silica, but when they say a quartz tube, it's quartz glass, i.e. silica, not the mineral.) When they say that the substrate was "copper-covered quartz" they mean: "copper-covered silica glass". When they say they made glass consisting of tw
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Quartz Re:Also? (Score:3)
"Quartz has a regular crystal structure, glass doesn't."
If you're a mineralogist. Try looking up "quartz glass" or "fused quartz" in google.
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A new property of graphene... (Score:1)
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it can also create very thin glass! Go graphene!
Computer! I bring up the molecular structure for Transparent Grapheneium!
We miss you, Mr. Scott
I hate to break it to them... (Score:5, Funny)
...but I think an old landlord of mine managed to do this, many years ago.
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So... (Score:1)
Serendipity (Score:2, Insightful)
Serendipity showing its hand in science once again.
This is just great! (Score:2)
You know what they say... (Score:3)
Are there any practical applications? (Score:1)
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While you post comments, do you read the summary at all? Or do you just read the first few letters and decide to post your thoughts?
"Such ultra-thin glass could be used in semiconductor or graphene transistors."
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I'm thinking that the leakage through such a thin layer of oxide would make it useless as an insulator in transistors.
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I'm thinking that the leakage through such a thin layer of oxide would make it useless as an insulator in transistors.
Maybe one could do a tunneling junction.
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Re:Are there any practical applications? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is said the most amazing discoveries come from a scientist saying "gee that's funny..."
By accidentally producing this very cool new material they have according to the abstract made the first electron microscopy of glass, allowed by this very thin layer being supported by but not bonded to the underlying graphite. And from the amazing picture they took, which amazingly resembles drawings made by a glass theorist 80 years ago, they were able to make calculations showing that the weak van der waals force is what's keeping this thing stable.
It is a totally awesome thing they found and probably gives them whole new ideas about how to grow thin 2d structures. Just a week ago there was another bit of news about awesome 2d ice channels in graphite that open and close to keep helium from going through them. Sounds like there are tons of totally awesome things that are possible in these crenulated 2d realms and graphite is helping us discover them.
Perhaps someone else here can theorize about what it all means.
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Two words: DOUBLE RAINBOWS!
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Screens for the next generation of iPads?
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Practical applications for new materials and other discoveries are seldom apparent at first. Even new inventions. Fifteen years ago everyone was asking me "why on earth do you have a computer?" When Edison invented voice recording, there were no practical applications for that, either, until Bell turned the wax cylinder into a shellack disk and people started listening to records.
And what's wrong for discovery for the sake of discovery? I'll bet you think astronomy is a wasted science and never should be fu
MOS transistors? (Score:2)
Might this be a good for improving MOS transistors (gate/channel insulator)?
Silicon and Oxygen? (Score:2)
Dupe Dupe Dupe (Score:2)
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=28788557 [slashdot.org]
Re:If it's three atoms thick... (Score:4, Insightful)
If I draw a picture on a piece of paper, we call that drawing two-dimensional despite the fact that the graphite and pulp that is formed with have thickness. Likewise, if a crystal only grows along a plane (rather than in three dimensions), then that crystalline structure is two-dimensional, even though the crystal itself is a three dimensional object. This is the same thing, the sheet of glass is three-dimensional, but the structure of the amorphous solid is two-dimensional.
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This was already said and responded to. Apparently the material is (obviously) not mathematically two dimensional, but there's also a physical concept of 2D which involves a material having reached its absolute minimum thinness. The molecules in glass are three atoms thick, therefore the thinnest possible glass is three atoms thick. According to the physical definition of 2D, this material is.
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In an earlier version of the script, the crew travel back in time to rescue the sperm whale, rather than the humpback whale, but due to an unfortunate communications error they end up trying to make a very small glass tank...