Scientists Have Made a Two-Dimensional Material That's Never Been Seen in Nature

A team of researchers from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia has reportedly made a 'once-in-a-decade discovery' that will radically change how we do chemistry. The discovery? The creation of two-dimensional materials no thicker than a few atoms — something that's never been seen before in nature. The research that led to this incredible find was led by Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh and Torben Daeneke from RMIT's School of Engineering. 

RMIT University

Alongside their students, they worked on the material's development for over a year. "When you write with a pencil, the graphite leaves very thin flakes called graphene, that can be easily extracted because they are naturally occurring layered structures," explains Daeneke.

"But what happens if these materials don't exist naturally? Here we found an extraordinary, yet very simple method to create atomically thin flakes of materials that don't naturally exist as layered structures."

To create the 2D material, the team dissolved metals in liquid metal to create very thin oxide layers capable of being peeled away.

Daeneke explains that process to create the oxide layer is very simply, like "frothing milk when making a cappuccino". It doesn't take much technical expertise to do, so anyone could, theoretically, do it — that said, it's unclear if you actually should.

This article was originally published by Futurism. Read the original article.