
Indian scientists develop world’s thinnest material - worldexplorer
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/science/indian-scientists-develop-worlds-thinnest-material-with-novel-technique/article22659534.ece
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sundarurfriend
Note: Indian newspapers* are pretty careless about phrases like "world's
thinnest" or "world's strongest", so take that part with a grain of salt. They
often just mean mind-bogglingly thin, and don't mean it as an absolute factual
statement. For eg., there seems to be older news[1][2] from 2007 where
European researchers created graphene sheets of single atom thickness, at 0.35
nm.

(*of course this probably also applies to other countries' media to varying
degrees, I'm just most familiar with this tendency here in India.)

Edit: The actual journal paper[3] doesn't mention the exact thickness of the
nanosheets, but it also mentions nanoflakes and nanograins and other forms of
the material, and those seem to be measured at "~6-7 nm". And from what I can
tell, the actual nanosheets vary in thickness and are not this utterly uniform
sheets I had conjured up in mind.

Pretty fascinating stuff, there's apparently a 'NanoArtography' competition
too [4], and this group won the People's Choice award with "The flower and the
bud":

> The image[5] represents magnesium and boron based nanostructures synthesized
> by a bottom-up approach being developed by our research group. [...] One of
> the clusters resembles a full grown flower and another cluster nearby it
> resembles a bud in the process of growing. The clusters seem connected by a
> stalk like structure. This nanoflower and nanobud was imaged using a
> Scanning electron microscope. Image width is 0.009 mm.

[1] [http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/03/01/scientists-
develop-t...](http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/03/01/scientists-develop-
thinnest-material-ever-one-atom-thick.html) [2]
[http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-
updates/thin...](http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-
updates/thinnest-material/) [3]
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cphc.201701033/ab...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cphc.201701033/abstract)
[4] [http://nano.drexel.edu/nanoartography-
competition/](http://nano.drexel.edu/nanoartography-competition/) [5]
[http://nano.drexel.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/peoples-
ch...](http://nano.drexel.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/peoples-choice.jpg)

