Nano-Silver Has A Golden Side

Chemistry





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Silver atoms at the vertices (green) and faces (purple) of an icosahedron, with sulfur (yellow) and carbon (green) forming ligands around the central superatom, acts almost identically to gold in the same format. Credit: Osman Bakr, KAUST

Alchemists dreamed of turning base metals to gold, but probably wouldn't have been too sad at the modern achievement – turning silver to something with a striking likeness to the element below it on the periodic table. While it's probably not time to sell gold stocks, the discovery may lead to silver's substitution for some current uses of gold.