TWEAKING ALUMINUM TO ACT LIKE RARE, EXPENSIVE METALS

A host of chemical reactions needed to manufacture electronics, industrial chemicals, and similar things depend on rhodium, lanthanum, and other rare, costly metals as catalysts—ingredients in a reaction that make it happen but aren’t changed or consumed in the process.

Now researchers at the University of Minnesota have invented a “catalytic condenser” that tweaks plain aluminum to behave like its more costly cousins.

The device “tunes” the number of electrons attached to an aluminum atom to change the atom’s behavior.

The condenser begins with a conducting material overlaid with an insulator. A layer of graphene—a sheet of carbon one atom thick—covers the insulator. The stack is topped with a layer of aluminum oxide four nanometers thick.

Zapping the graphene and conductor with an electric current changes the electrical properties of the aluminum sheet, making it mimic the properties of a chosen metal.

The aluminum can be “tuned” to mimic a specific metal by strengthening or weakening the current, changing the insulation’s make-up, or adding extra ingredients to the aluminum.

TRENDPOST: The new process can save costs and reduce prices for a range of industrial and consumer products, not to mention avoiding some of the damage mining does to the environment and human health.

More broadly, the new discovery gives materials engineers a new inspiration, and perhaps a new tool, in the age-old quest to turn one element into another: even if they can’t turn lead into gold, maybe they can make one element act like another.