Tuesday, 29th May 2007 (3249 views)

An individual gold atom could work as a kind of glue to connect varying types of monomers together creating unknown structures, it has been reported.

Chemical Science magazine reports that these new structures made up of aromatic rings and bonded by gold atoms creating one-dimensional nanostrips were predicted by staff at the University of Helsinki in Finland, using theoretical calculations.

Furthermore, the journal reports that the nanostrips could act as insulators, metals or semiconductors depending on their chemical makeup and geometry.

"Due to the abundance of possibilities, one is able to experiment with various starting materials in search of successful syntheses of these new systems," Pekka Pyykko of the University of Helsinki told the magazine.

Pyykko added that due to the small repeating molecular units in the nanostrips, very accurate chemical predictions could be made.

The University of Helsinki team is now researching the possibility of bending the strips into rings, according to Chemical Science.

 

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