By Peter Weiss
By isolating single layers from materials with naturally layered structures, physicists in England and Russia have created what they say are the world’s thinnest freestanding materials, some just one atom thick.
The liberated layers are surprisingly robust, persisting as flat sheets at room temperature and preserving their crystalline structures, the scientists report in the July 26 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. What’s more, the freed sheets can differ from their parent materials in key properties.