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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.437 NO.7062 DATED 20 OCTOBER 2005
This press release contains:
* Chemistry: Going for gold
* Electronics: Hitting an atomic bull's-eye
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[1] Chemistry: Going for gold (pp1132-1135; N&V)
Chemists have invented an efficient way to incorporate oxygen directly from
the air into the hydrocarbon molecules found in oil and gas. The discovery,
reported in this week's Nature, relies on tiny particles of gold to make the
reaction work, and has the potential to replace industrial procedures that
use harsh oxidants and generate toxic waste products.
Graham J. Hutchings and colleagues found that gold nanoparticles can
activate oxygen molecules at normal atmospheric pressure and relatively low
temperatures of 60-80 degrees Celsius, thus speeding up oxidation reactions.
They also report that the reaction can be fine-tuned to give the desired
products by changing the solvent, which is the liquid that dissolves all the
reacting molecules. For example, this allowed the chemists to selectively
create molecules where an oxygen atom bridges two carbon atoms, called
epoxides, without oxidizing them any further.
"The selective oxidation of hydrocarbons is immensely important to modern
chemical industries," comments Masatake Haruta in a related News and Views
article. "Oxygen-containing organic compounds are used to produce
detergents, paints, cosmetics and food additives, among other things."
CONTACT:
Graham J. Hutchings (Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK)
Tel: +44 29 2087 4805; E-mail: [email protected]
Masatake Haruta (Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan)
Tel: +81 426 77 2852, E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Electronics: Hitting an atomic bull's-eye (pp1128-1131)
The semiconductor materials in electrical components such as transistors
require traces of impurities, called dopants, to work properly. These
dopants are usually scattered randomly through the semiconductor. In this
week's Nature, scientists reveal how arranging the dopants into regular
arrays can improve device performance, particularly when the devices are
very small.
Takahiro Shinada and colleagues used a beam of charged phosphorus atoms to
add dopants to a tiny transistor - they fire these charged dopant atoms one
by one into a silicon chip, and precisely control exactly where they land.
These phosphorus ions were regularly spaced in a grid pattern through the
silicon chip, with each ion about 100 nanometres away from its neighbours.
Conventional semiconductors are doped randomly, but as electronic devices
get ever smaller this randomness becomes a problem. If the average
separation between the dopants is comparable to the size of the devices, the
number and distribution of the dopant atoms can vary substantially from
device to device, interfering with their electrical properties. Precise,
atomic-scale control of doping improves the performance and reproducibility
of the smallest electronic circuits, and could even help to create a
silicon-based quantum computer.
CONTACT:
Takahiro Shinada (Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan)
Tel: +81 3 5272 1407; E-mail: [email protected]
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