Graphene sheets used to study liquids

Pockets formed in graphene sheets have provided scientists with new laboratory products that can study liquids at a higher resolution.

High-power microscopes have been created using the carbon-based material grapheme, with details of the advance recently being published in Science journal. The material can provide a clear 'window' to see liquids at a higher resolution, which cannot be achieved using transmission electron microscopes.

Jong Min Yuk at the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues made the breakthrough, finding that graphene sheets can be used to study liquids at clear, atomic, resolution using transmission electron microscopes (TEMs). The team were able to observe new and unexpected stages of nanocrystal growth as it happened using the new technique.

In the future, scientists may choose to use the new approach to study other physical, chemical, and biological phenomena that take place in liquids on the nanometre scale. Christian Colliex, from the Universite Paris Sud in France said: "Their approach opens new domains of research in the physics and chemistry in the fluid phase in general."

Posted by Ben Evans