News Excerpt: 

Researchers have created a free-standing sheet of gold that is only one atom thick. This makes gold the first metal to be formulated into (freestanding) 2D sheets opening up a host of exciting possibilities for the future.

Developing goldene:

• Goldene is the name given to a one-atom-thick material made of gold, developed by scientists from Linköping University in Sweden.
• Since the 2004 discovery of graphene, scientists have found hundreds of 2D materials.
• However, creating atom-thin metallic sheets has been challenging due to metals' tendency to form nanoparticles. 
• While gold sheets have been made before, "goldene" is the first standalone 2D metal.
• Goldene was created by first sandwiching a monolayer of silicon between layers of titanium carbide,
• The gold atoms diffused into the material and replaced the silicon atoms 
• Scientists etched away the titanium carbide layers to create a free-standing, one-atom-thick layer of gold. 
• This was done with the help of an age-old Japanese technique used to forge katanas and high-quality knives, using a chemical popularly known as Murakami’s reagent.
• Goldene sheets are approximately 100 nanometers thick and 400 times thinner than the thinnest commercially available gold leaf.

Many potential applications:

• Scientists believe that the super thin, super light material can potentially revolutionize the electronics industry.
• Goldene holds promise as a great catalyst because it’s much more economically viable than thicker, three-dimensional gold.
• The technique used to create goldene can potentially be applied to other metals, and the researchers are already working on creating 2D sheets of iridium and platinum.
• Potential applications of goldene include carbon dioxide conversion, hydrogen-generating catalysis, selective production of value-added chemicals, hydrogen production, and water purification, due to its unique 2D properties.