US Chemistry Professor At Nebraska Discovers Nanotechnology's Holy Grail

A US chemistry professor, Xiao Cheng Zeng has discovered the first free-standing hollow cage structure made of pure metal atoms. The hollow cage structure is composed of cluster organized atoms, now dubbed golden hollow cages.

Surprisingly, many structures really look like bird cages. But what’s even more surprising –and useful- is that they’re empty. That means that they can host an atom. Zeng and his colleagues at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) writes about his discovery in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences' online edition. The guest atoms that the empty cages might host could be medical or industrial atoms. The atoms might be used for the delivery of a vital drug in the human blood stream or help researchers reach a diagnosis. In industry, the particles could be used to generate hydrogen fuel or other chemical processes. "I'm excited by this discovery. These are the first metal hollow cages," Zeng said. "No one expected the cage structure. It was a shocking surprise." Zeng is a nanomaterials science expert and claims that his finding might equate to a major breakthrough in his field. Previously, empty gold clusters have never been found. What is so amusing is the very shape of the empty structure. Scientists have reported that the shape of smaller gold clusters with 14 atoms are usually flat, pancake like and that clusters with 19 or 20 atoms are ‘adults’, ie they resemble the same composition as bulk gold, which is pyramidal. "The holy grail of cluster science is studying these clusters from smallest, or infant, to largest, or adult, from cluster to bulk," according to the professor. He might have achieved this goal, by determining the very surprising empty cells. Zeng and consorts started studying the adolescent structures –made of 15,16, 17 atoms, which are totally invisible even for microscopes- last year and ended up at the smallest ever structure. He says that nobody expected hollow cages in between. Using UNL's PrairieFire supercomputer together with computers in the chemistry department, they applied their combined technique to generate many theoretical fingerprints of the gold clusters' structure. He sounds like a character from an Umberto Eco novel, saying "I'd call Satya [presumably his infinitessimally larger bit of material] at 3 a.m. [saying] I’d be working in the lab. It was exciting," he told some reporters at a specialist HPC magazine.