Growing metal snowflakes the thickness of a human hair could revolutionise computer tech

In the new study, the Australia-based members of the team worked with various metals — aluminium, bismuth, copper, nickel, tin, platinum, silver and zinc — dissolving them in liquid gallium at high temperatures.

When the solutions were allowed to cool, metallic crystals precipitated out while the gallium remained liquid. Because liquid gallium has a high surface tension, extracting the crystals without damaging their fine microscopic features proved a considerable challenge.

However, the team were able to develop a method to do just that by first using an electrical field to lower the liquid metal’s surface tension, and then vacuum filtration to isolate the metal crystals from the solvent.

The crystals were found to come in various shapes — from cubes and rods to hexagonal plates and, in the case of zinc, snowflakes.

Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1712499/metal-snowflakes-liquid-gallium-zinc-nanoscale-nanostructures-computing-sensing