Chemists Used Buckyballs to Squeeze a Noble Gas Into One Dimension
On my commute to work today, I had the misfortune of being crammed into a narrow tube underground. But it could have been worse: I could’ve been squished into a single dimension.
That’s what recently happened to some krypton atoms in an Ulm University chemistry lab. Using transmission electron microscopy (or TEM), a team managed to squeeze the noble gas into a nanotube with a diameter 1/500,000th that of a human hair. In such a confined space, the atoms could not squeeze by one another and coalesce, and they became a one-dimensional gas. The team’s research is published in the journal of the American Chemical Society.
Read more
What Cops Say This Georgia Pageant Queen Did To This Baby Will Shock You
The biggest snubs and surprises from the 2024 Oscar nominations
The Icon Of The Seas Is 250,000 Tons Of Floating Carbon-Emissions Horror
To do this, they trapped the krypton in buckyballs—short for buckminsterfullerene, a soccer ball-shaped molecule composed of 60 carbon atoms. The buckyballs acted as a cage for each krypton atom. The researchers could then release the krypton from the buckyballs by heating it to 2,192 degrees Fahrenheit (1,200 Celsius) or irradiating it with an electron beam. Both methods cause the buckyballs to fuse, leaving the krypton atoms in a neat line in a carbon nanotube. Once in that line, definition between each atom disappeared: they were a uniform, one-dimensional gas.
“As far as we know, this is the first time that chains of noble gas atoms have been imaged directly, leading to the creation of a one-dimensional gas in a solid material,” said Paul Brown, director of the University of Nottingham’s Nanoscale and Microscale Research Centre, in the release.
If we’re being extremely technical, sure, the krypton in the tube is three-dimensional in that the gas still has some volume, even if its diameter is extremely narrow. It exists in the same way that ‘one-dimensional’ strands of electrons stretch across the Milky Way galaxy. Still, it’s cool. Studying how atoms interact can help scientists learn how matter behaves in such cramped conditions and thus better understand nature at its extremes.
More: One Dimensional Pong Is Still Surprisingly Challenging
More from Gizmodo
Someone Paid $2,300 Per Month In Depreciation To Drive This Bentley Bentayga
Is It Worse For Your Car To Leave It Salty Or Wash It In Freezing Temperatures?
Sign up for Gizmodo's Newsletter. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
