Will 2-D tin be the next super material? | Hacker News Reader

Will 2-D tin be the next super material?

m.phys.org

54 pointshythloday32 comments

The Physical Review Letters abstract[1] (kindly included as a link in the recycled press release[2] kindly submitted here) may lead to more information about this preliminary finding.

Research lab press releases are a known part of the Science News Cycle[3] and are at best just a teaser to get actual working scientists to read the peer-reviewed journal publications to see how much those really say.

There is such a visceral reaction to PhysOrg as a press-release recycling service here on Hacker News that I will, not meaning to put down the kind person who submitted this link, post some previous Hacker News comments about PhysOrg as a source below the references for this comment. It will be interesting to see what comes of this preliminary research report.

[1] http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v111/i13/e136804

[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/is-it-...

[3] http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174

SOMEWHAT LONG FAQ ON PhysOrg AS A SOURCE:

PhysOrg appears to have been banned as a site to submit from by Reddit. I learned from other participants here on HN that there are better sites to submit from.

Comments about PhysOrg:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077869

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3149824

"I viscerally distrust anything from physorg.com. Anyone have a better option?"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3198249

"Straight from the European Space Agency, cutting out the physorg blogspam:

http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1116/ (press release),

http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1116a/ (video),

http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/scien... (paper).

"PhysOrg: just say no."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3611888

"The physorg article summary is wrong, I think."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108857

"Phys.org is vacuous and often flat wrong."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4890900

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5106145

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"Your perpetual (and totally correct) crusade against PhysOrg reminds me there are others doing the same, and for that I thank you."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5276327

"Physorg? Ugh.

"Didn't even bother click, came here to read comments instead.

"Can HN please ban Physorg like everyone else?"

Could this material be used for "heavy" stuff, like power transmission or lifting trains, and not only electronics?

The square-cube law would probably end up being a problem - there's only so much current that can flow through a one- or two-dimensional conductor even with zero resistance.

By ohm's law, zero resistance means infinite current. I don't know anything about super conductors, but I thought that was the appeal? If not, what replaces ohms law in a superconductor? Or, put differently, how is the current limit defined?

The critical current does. Superconductivity is eventually destroyed by magnetic fields, so all superconductors can only carry so much current before they quench and become regular conductors.

But this isn't a superconductor - it's a ballistic conductor. The idea is that it'll ballistically transport electrons with certain energy levels, which is functionally superconductivity (they don't lose energy to the conductor itself). But, since only electrons with a certain energy can enter in the first place, and since the energy levels are defined as a Boltzmann distribution, they still have a resistance which is proportional to the band of electron energies which cannot enter.

So at RT it's great for a CPU, where the problem is you don't want heat being created on the die itself. But it doesn't allow you to do long-distance transmission like we'd like to with regular superconductors (since it would still have a resistance), and the mono-monolecular nature implies it wouldn't scale anyway.

Thanks so much for this comment - when reading the article I noticed it carefully circumlocuted "superconductivity", and was curious what the difference was. This perfectly explains it (and goes into further interesting detail), which is exactly what I wanted.

Sounds like whatever "resistance" they may have, is all at the interface.

Ohm's law only applies to linear components, of which exactly 0 exist in nature. Everything approximates linearity to varying degrees – resistors approximate it over a wide range of currents (up until they melt); MOSFETs approximate it until they reach saturation; diodes approximate it only infinitesmally.

By the speed of light and the carrying capacity of the electron "channels".

What about a composite of 100(?) layers of this separated by proper insulation? Hypothetically, the insulation itself could be quite thin as well

It's a density argument.

That is all nice, but still theoretical. Good luck constructing material made with flourine in a very specific way.

But the addition of the Florine raised the operating temperature. The tin itself can still be constructed and tested.

We can push single atoms around in the lab, so I don't think there will be too many problems in testing this experimentally.

Heard from someone who has done that kind of thing: it's really hard, it mostly fails. When you see the pretty images, they are the results of months of frustrating, mostly-failure lab work. Surfaces are hard, because everything affects everything, and changes ripple around moving the stuff you just placed.

Is really hard, but there are experts who specialise in really hard things. My point was that it is not harder than many other hard things that people regularly accomplish.

Do you actually have concrete evidence that the hardness of this particular thing is similarly difficult to these other hard things that are regularly accomplished, or is this just "hard things are the same as other things also termed hard"?

My impression is that pushing atoms around and getting them to actually stay where they have been pushed are different things.

I expect it to be about as difficult as this - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1466604901... - but not quite as difficult as this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0 - or this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8

You believe that single atoms of the most reactive element (fluorine) will not be quite as difficult as carbon monoxide molecules [1] to push around?

[1] The pixels in the first of the two videos you linked to, according to http://www.research.ibm.com/articles/madewithatoms.shtml#fbi...

I don't believe that you would have to push them around at all in the way that the IBM guys are pushing around those atoms, I put that forward as something that is harder to do. You'd probably start with batch making a ton of very small doped samples and then testing if any have unusually low resistance.

Maybe, but that 'fluorine' part is cause for concern (http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_won...: "The latest addition to the long list of chemicals that I never hope to encounter takes us back to the wonderful world of fluorine chemistry. I'm always struck by how much work has taken place in that field, how long ago some of it was first done, and how many violently hideous compounds have been carefully studied.")

There may be a perfectly harmless way to make this at industrial scale, but I would not bet on it.

Don't compare a fluorine dopped metal with the kind of composts this guy talks about. Thate are plenty of "not that bad"* ways to deal with the element, and it creates quite inocuous ionic structures.

* There are plenty of receipts with things like "...now heat your pure sulfuric acid over 300°C, until it becomes a gas...". Just throwing fluoridric acid over a metal is that kind of "safe".

The 'F' in PTFE (AKA Teflon) is Fluorine - Fluorine compounds are perfectly safe so long as they're correctly-handled, and they can be as inert as anything else.

I agree with your general point, but as an aside I wouldn't call Teflon perfectly safe...it's fine as long as you don't heat it up too much, but at higher temperatures it releases toxic gasses (and we're talking temperatures you can easily reach on your kitchen stove).

So it is about as dangerous as wood then.

Toothpaste manufacture must be nearly impossible then.

That's sodium hexafluorosilicate (Na2SiF6). It's much less reactive than elemental fluorine.

Tin fluoride is also commonly used in toothpaste under the name of stannous fluoride.

Hehe, I read "stannous" and immediately thought of Stannis Baratheon.

Headline is misleading.

The magic phrase in the article is "could be".

No. [1] (pardon the snark)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

As freely as cars on a freeway? I want better for my electrons.

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