Scientists accidently created the world's thinnest glass, and it's only one molecule thick. The achievement was recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records.
The glass is so thin that it allows researchers to very clearly view individual silicon and oxygen atoms with electron microscopy, a Cornell University press release reported.
David A. Muller, professor of applied and engineering physics and director of the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, was trying to make graphene ("a two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms in a chicken wire crystal formation") one day. He was using copper coils and a quartz furnace, during the process the scientist noticed "muck" on the graphene."
Upon further inspection Muller found the substance was made of the same elements as "glass, silicon, and oxygen."
The team decided an air leak, combines with the copper and quartz, was what created the never-before seen substance.
The finding also helped researchers to better understand glass, which acts like a solid but appears more as a liquid. Scientists were not previously able to figure out why this was because they could not directly see the matter.
For the first time, researchers were able to produce an image of individual glass atoms. The result was shockingly similar to a graph drawn in 1932 by W.H. Zachariasen.
"This is the work that, when I look back at my career, I will be most proud of," Muller said. "It's the first time that anyone has been able to see the arrangement of atoms in a glass."
The ultra-thin glass could one day be used to improve the processors in computers and smart phones.
Humans made glass as far back as 2000 B.C. in Mesopotamia, Corning Museum of Glass reported.
"When hot glass cools, it becomes stiffer and stiffer. In that regard, liquid glass is not like the liquids you know. For example, water does not get noticeably stiffer when you cool it, but at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, suddenly turns to ice. Glass just continuously becomes more jelled. At room temperature, glass is so stiff that it behaves in all applications like a very hard and brittle solid," Dieter G. Ast, a professor at Cornell Center for Materials research said on their Ask a Scientists website.
