https://phys.org/news/2024-01-imaging-t ... sters.html
by University of Vienna
For the first time, a research team has succeeded in stabilizing and directly imaging small clusters of noble gas atoms at room temperature. This achievement opens exciting possibilities for condensed matter physics and applications in quantum information technology.
The key to this breakthrough, achieved by researchers at the University of Vienna in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Helsinki, was the inclusion of noble gas atoms between two graphene layers. This overcomes the difficulty that noble gases do not form stable structures under experimental conditions at room temperature.
Details of the method and the first electron microscopic images of noble gas structures (krypton and xenon) have now been published in Nature Materials .
Jani Kotakoski's group at the University of Vienna was studying the use of ion irradiation to change the properties of graphene and other two-dimensional materials when they noticed something unusual: When noble gases are used for irradiation, they can become trapped between two graphene layers. This happens when the noble gas ions are fast enough to penetrate the first but not the second graphene layer.