Nobody can shoot a bullet through a banana in such a
way that the skin is perforated but the banana remains intact.
However, on the level of individual atomic layers, researchers at
TU Wien (Vienna) have now achieved such a feat—they developed a
nano-structuring method with which certain layers of material can
be perforated extremely precisely and others left completely
untouched, even though the projectile penetrates all layers.This is
made possible with the help of highly charged ions. They can be
used to selectively process the surfaces of novel 2-D material
systems, for example, to anchor certain metals on them, which can
then serve as catalysts. The new method has now been published in
the journal ACS Nano.
Researchers develop technique for processing surfaces on an
atomic scale
