Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Described by Nature as the “gilded cousin of Graphene”, Goldene is a one-atom-thick sheet of gold created by scientists from Linköping University (LiU) in Sweden. It has unique properties that the researchers believe could pave the way for applications such as carbon dioxide conversion, hydrogen production, water purification, and communication. Shun Kashiwaya, a researcher at the Materials Design Division at LiU, explains, "If you make a material extremely thin, something extraordinary happens. As with Graphene, the same thing happens with gold. As you know, gold is usually a metal, but if single-atom-layer thick, the gold can become a semiconductor instead." An accidental discovery Historically, attempts to create single-atom sheets of gold have been hindered due to the metal’s propensity to lump together. However, the successful creation of Goldene was achieved via a century-old Japanese smithing technique called Murakami’s reage