[NetBehaviour] Molecules Spontaneously Form Honeycomb Network Featuring Pores Of Unprecedented Size.

[marc]

Molecules Spontaneously Form Honeycomb Network Featuring Pores Of 
Unprecedented Size.


UC Riverside researchers have discovered a new way in which nature 
creates complex patterns: the assembly of molecules with no guidance 
from an outside source. Potential applications of the finding are 
paints, lubricants, medical implants, and processes where 
surface-patterning at the scale of molecules is desired.

Spreading anthraquinone, a common and inexpensive chemical, on to a flat 
copper surface, Greg Pawin, a chemistry graduate student working in the 
laboratory of Ludwig Bartels, associate professor of chemistry, observed 
the spontaneous formation of a two-dimensional honeycomb network 
comprised of anthraquinone molecules.

The finding, reported in the Aug. 18 issue of Science, describes a new 
mechanism by which complex patterns are generated at the nanoscale – 0.1 
to 100 nanometers in size, a nanometer being a billionth of a meter – 
without any need for expensive processes such as lithography.

"We know that some of the most striking phenomena in nature, like the 
colors on a butterfly wing, come about by the regular arrangement of 
atoms and molecules," said Pawin, the first author of the paper. "But 
what physical and chemical processes guide their arrangement? 
Anthraquinone showed us how such patterns can form easily and 
spontaneously."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060818014819.htm

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