Creating faux gold for clinical laboratory IT solutions

The cost of high-performance clinical laboratory IT solutions could be set to fall as scientists claim to have synthesised gold.

Although their solution is not true alchemy, they have developed artificial alternatives to gold with similar contact properties.

Their faux gold could therefore replace the precious metal in clinical laboratory IT solutions, helping to counter the record high prices for the commodity at present.

Scientists from the University of Connecticut worked on the project, which focused on alloys of base metals as alternatives to costly noble metals.

Contact resistance improvement of as much as one million times that of the base metal itself was found in some cases, leading to gold-like performance.

Professor of materials science and engineering Mark Aindow says: "We used a combination of theoretical analysis to select the appropriate constituents and materials engineering at the atomic level to create designer materials."

The University of Connecticut claims that it is "perennially ranked" as New England's top public university.