Scientists Made Electrical Wires From The Smallest Diamond In The World

A group of scientists from the Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory were successful in creating electric wires, which were only three atoms in width. The wires were made by using self-organizational abilities diamondoids, which are essentially the smallest bits of diamonds found in the world. The process was extremely technical and did not even require any hands-on intervention by the scientists.

Information on the research and development of the electric wires was revealed in a recent news release made by the officials of the Stanford University. Hao Yan, Post Doctoral Fellow, Stanford University, said that, "What we have shown here is that we can make tiny, conductive wires of the smallest possible size that essentially assemble themselves."

The Diamondoids used in the experiment were extracted from various types of petroleum fluids and were then sorted by size. Diamondoids made up of around 10 carbon atoms that were then attached to a sulfur atom. The smallest diamond in the world was then placed in a chemical solution, which allowed further attachment of copper ions to the atoms, UPI reported.

These diamondiods were attracted toward each other due to the forces of Van der Waals attraction. It was found that these small metal conjugated diamond bits fit together to create a tiny electrical wire made up of sulfur and copper ions.

"The process is a simple, one-pot synthesis," Yan said and further informed that, "You dump the ingredients together and you can get results in half an hour. It's almost as if the diamondoids know where they want to go."

According to a report published by Phys.org, scientists are of the opinion that these extremely small electric wires will find immense applications in the development of nanoscale integrated electronic circuits in the near future. Nicholas Melosh, a professor at Stanford University, said that, "You can imagine weaving those into fabrics to generate energy."

"This method gives us a versatile toolkit where we can tinker with a number of ingredients and experimental conditions to create new materials with finely tuned electronic properties and interesting physics," Prof. Melosh further added.