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>A team of Chinese researchers have turned cheap copper into a new material “almost identical” to gold, according to a study published in peer-reviewed journal Science Advances on Saturday. The discovery will significantly reduce the use of rare, expensive metals in factories, said the authors.
>The new material created by Sun’s lab cannot be used to make fake gold pennies. Its density remains the same as ordinary copper. But the process could prove lucrative and provide a significant boost for Chinese industries, according to the researchers.
>Precious metals remain central to modern economies. The components of electronic devices, for instance, contain a large amount of gold, silver and platinum. About 40 smartphones can contain as much gold as a tonne of ore, it has been estimated. The method developed by Sun’s team can inject a large amount of energy into copper atoms and made the electrons more dense and stable, they said.
>Professor Sun Jian and colleagues at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Liaoning, shot a copper target with a jet of hot, electrically charged argon gas. The fast-moving ionised particles blasted copper atoms off the target. The atoms cooled down and condensed on the surface of a collecting device, producing a thin layer of sand. The researchers put the material in a reaction chamber and used it as a catalyst to turn coal to alcohol, a sophisticated and difficult chemical process that only precious metals can handle efficiently.
>“The copper nano particles achieved catalytic performance extremely similar to that of gold or silver,” Sun and collaborators said in a statement posted on the academy’s website on Saturday. The new material can resist high temperatures, oxidisation and erosion, according to the researchers.
scmp.com
