An experiment that, by design, was not supposed to turn up anything of note instead produced a "bewildering" surprise, according to the Stanford scientists who made the discovery: a new way of creating gold nanoparticles and nanowires using water droplets.
The technique, detailed April 19 in the journal Nature Communications, is the latest discovery in the new field of on-droplet chemistry and could lead to more environmentally friendly ways to produce nanoparticles of gold and other metals, said study leader Richard Zare, a chemist in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a co-founder of Stanford Bio-X.
"Being able to do reactions in water means you don't have to worry about contamination. It's green chemistry," said Zare, who is the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science at Stanford.
[...] Around the mid-1980s, however, scientists discovered that gold's chemical aloofness only manifests at large, or macroscopic, scales. At the nanometer scale, gold particles are very chemically reactive and make excellent catalysts. Today, gold nanostructures have found a role in a wide variety of applications, including bio-imaging, drug delivery, toxic gas detection and biosensors.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 21 2018, @03:46PM
FTFY
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 21 2018, @04:38PM
That may well be true in a research lab. The day this goes into the industrial world, kiss that idea goodbye. I know of one instance in which a chemical plant tracked down a failing pump because they could no longer make the product meet specs. The introduction of iron from the pump shaft caused several batches of product to be rejected. Just one failing seal, and corrosion cost the company several tens of thousands of dollars.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 21 2018, @04:40PM (1 child)
are all the details of all these advances constantly being reported from universities being released to the public or only licensed to companies or something? IOW, do we pay for the research through grants and other exemptions and tax benefits to universities and then pay again when we have to buy some finished product from some mega corp? if so, who is responsible for this malfeasance?
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday April 21 2018, @11:17PM
It's Gold Water, do you expect it to be cheap? No, I expect it to cost.