, could someday allow scientists to use less gold in electronics and chemical reactions, says materials physicist Lars Hultman of Linköping University in Sweden. The gold sheet may also exhibitGoldene holds promise as “a great catalyst because it’s much more economically viable” than thicker, three-dimensional gold, Hultman says. “You don’t need as many gold atoms to get the same function.
“The good news was that we were freeing goldene,” Hultman says. “The bad news was that as the goldene was freed, it started to curl up on itself like a scroll.” Keeping the goldene sheets flat required the team to add a surfactant to the etching solution in which the sheets floated. The team hopes to apply a similar etching strategy to make 2-D sheets of other metals like iridium and platinum, says coauthor Shun Kashiwaya, a materials scientist at Linköping University.