Look carefully at a snowflake, and also you’ll observe a one-of-a-kind gossamer lattice, its development influenced by ambient situations like temperature and humidity. Turns out, this form of intricate self-assemblage can even happen in metals, researchers report within the Dec. 9 Science.
In swimming pools of molten gallium, physicist Nicola Gaston and colleagues grew zinc nanostructures with symmetrical, hexagonal crystal frameworks. Such metallic snowflakes might be helpful for catalyzing chemical reactions and setting up electronics, says Gaston, of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology on the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
“Self-assembly is the way nature makes nanostructures,” she says. “We’re trying to learn to do the same things.” Figuring out easy methods to craft tiny, complicated metallic shapes in fewer steps and with much less power might be a boon for producers.
The researchers selected gallium as a development medium, because of its comparatively low melting level, potential to dissolve many different metals and the tendency for its atoms to loosely set up whereas in a liquid state.
After mixing zinc into the gallium, the crew subjected the alloy to elevated temperatures and completely different pressures, after which let the combination cool to room temperature. The free ordering of gallium atoms appeared to coax the crystallizing zinc to bloom into symmetrical, hexagonal buildings resembling pure snowflakes and different shapes, the crew discovered. It’s considerably like how a fruit tray imparts order on the fruits stacked inside, Gaston says.
The future could also be shiny for analysis into functions of gallium and different low-temperature liquid metals. “Not to take that snowflake metaphor too far, but [this work] really hints at new branches for scientific discovery,” Gaston says.