14 DAY TRIAL // Towards the beginning of 2012, scientists at Cornell University and the University of Ulm announced that they had created the world's thinnest sheet of glass. Their achievement is now set to be mentioned in the Guinness World Records 2014 Edition.
Science Daily explains that the incredibly thin glass created by said researchers measures just two atoms, or one molecule, in thickness. A paper describing it in detail was published in the journal Nano Letters in January 2012.
What's interesting is that the scientists did not develop it on purpose. On the contrary, their discovery was an accidental one.
Thus, the brainiacs were merely “cooking” graphene on copper foils inside a quartz furnace when they spotted some “muck” on the material they were making.
Upon closer examination, it became clear that this “muck” was made up of silicon and oxygen, which happen to be the elements that comprise run-off-the-mill glass.
The glass layer that came to form on the graphene during these experiments was so thin that, when placed under an electronic microscope, each of its silicon and oxygen atoms was clearly visible.
The series of experiments that led to the manufacture of this incredibly thin glass was conducted in researcher David A. Muller's laboratory at Cornell University's Kavli Institute, the same source tells us.
These molecule-thick layers of glass allowed scientists to closely examine the structure of glass for the first time ever, the same source informs us.
“This is the work that, when I look back at my career, I will be most proud of,” says David A. Muller, professor of applied and engineering physics.
“It's the first time that anyone has been able to see the arrangement of atoms in a glass,” he adds.
Scientists say that, all things considered, such incredibly thin layers of glass could one day be used to boost the performance of processors used to manufacture computers and smartphones.