Metals are usually characterized by good electrical
conductivity. This applies in particular to gold and silver.
However, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solid State
Research in Stuttgart, together with partners in Pisa and Lund,
have now discovered that some precious metals lose this property if
they are thin enough. The extreme of a layer only one atom thick
thus behaves like a semiconductor. This once again demonstrates
that electrons behave differently in the two-dimensional layer of a
material than in three-dimensional structures. The new properties
could potentially lead to applications, for example in
microelectronics and sensor technology.
