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Monday, 26th January 2009 (4328 views)

A team of researchers has discovered that gold gets harder rather than softer when it is heated up.

The University of Toronto scientists have described their findings as "surprising" and noted that when gold was heated at rates too fast to allow electrons absorbing light energy to collide with surrounding atoms "the bonds between atoms actually got stronger".

Led by chemistry and physics professor Dwayne Miller, the team published the results of their experiments in the journal Science revealing that, at "terrific heating rates" of more than one billion million degrees per second, gold became harder instead of softer.

Ralph Ernstorfer, lead author of the study, stated: "The effect of bond hardening in gold has been theoretically predicted. Now we have actually observed it for the first time."

The experts heated gold to temperatures approaching those found in the interior of stars to provide an atomic-level view of ‘warm dense matter’ which had a harder lattice and an increased melting point.

In other news, gold has been integrated into a new mechanical switch using nanotechnology by physicist Marius Trouwborst.

 

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