Photo credit: University of Auckland
Scientists at the University of Auckland, University of Wellington and University of New South Wales have managed to grow microscopic zinc snowflakes in liquid metal at the nanoscale level. More specifically, snowflakes grown in liquid gallium that could one day be used in some catalyst reactions, such as the conversion of carbon dioxide.
The team worked in the lab with nickel, copper, zinc, tin, platinum, bismuth, silver and aluminum. They dissolved the metals in gallium at high temperatures and once cooled, the metallic snowflakes crystals emerged while the gallium remained liquid. What they discovered was that interactions between the atomistic structures of the different metals and the liquid gallium resulted in differently shaped crystals to emerge.
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What we are learning is that the structure of the liquid gallium is very important. That’s novel because we usually think of liquids as lacking structure or being only randomly structured. In contrast to top-down approaches to forming nanostructure – by cutting away material – this bottom-up approaches relies on atoms self-assembling. This is how nature makes nanoparticles, and is both less wasteful and much more precise than top-down methods,” said Nicola Gaston, Professor at University of Auckland.
