Nanowerk December 10, 2022
Nanoscale structures can aid electronic manufacturing, make materials stronger yet lighter, or aid environmental clean-ups by binding to toxins. An international team of researchers (Australia, New Zealand) developed an extraction method achieved by applying a voltage to the liquid metal solution while vacuum filtrating. The resulting crystals can have intricate morphologies like snowflakes. They used the low-melting-temperature Ga as a “metallic solvent” to synthesize a range of flake-like Zn crystals. They extracted the metallic crystals from the liquid metal solvent by reducing its surface tension using a combination of electrocapillary modulation and vacuum filtration. The crystals featured high morphological diversity and persistent symmetry. They expanded the concept to other single and binary metal solutes and Ga-based solvents, with the growth mechanisms elucidated through ab initio simulation of interfacial stability. According to the researchers their strategy offers general routes for creating highly crystalline, shape-controlled metallic or multimetallic fine structures from liquid metal solvents…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Nano-scale snowflake from Gallium solvent. Credit: Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland