As tension increases strange things begin to happen at the atomic level. This is especially so with gold atoms. Scientists working at Chalmers University of Technology have succeeded in making the surface of a gold object melt at room temperature.
Gold in its purest form is a bright, slightly reddish yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. The melting point of gold is 1064.18 degrees Celsius. For practical use, gold is usually alloyed with base metals for use in jewelry, altering its hardness and ductility, melting point, color and other properties.
A new means to melt gold was detected when researcher Ludvig de Knoop was examining a fragment of gold via an electron microscope. de Knoop noted that at the highest level of magnification with an increased electric field the gold atoms changed.
On closer study of recordings made by the microscope, de Knoop observed that the surface layers of gold had melted at room temperature. This was a phenomenon that had not previously been observed.
This led de Knoop to declare in a research note: “I was really stunned by the discovery. This is an extraordinary phenomenon, and it gives us new, foundational knowledge of gold.”
The process was undertaken by exposing the atoms of a gold cone to a strong electric field. The field excites the gold atoms, breaking their connections to each other and causing the surface layers to melt. What was happening was that the electric field was causing the gold atoms to lose their ordered structure and released almost all their connections to each other.
What else was of interest was by further tests, it was also possible to switch the gold between a solid and a molten structure.
Based on a set of theoretical calculations from the researchers, it is now possible to melt gold at room temperature based on a process called low-dimensional phase transition. This would need to be tested out on a larger scale. However this proceeds, These insights could open up new avenues in materials science.
The research has been published in the journal Physical Review Materials, with the research paper titled “Electric-field-controlled reversible order-disorder switching of a metal tip surface.”
