科學家合成出六邊形的鹽

While it probably won't make it to your dining table, a new scientific achievement might be able to help in everything from radar equipment to electric cars: scientists have been able to form salt, aka sodium chloride (NaCl), in a hexagonal shape.

雖然這個新的科技成果可能不會登上你的餐桌，但可能會對很多領域有所幫助，如雷達設備、電動汽車等。科學家已經能合成六邊形的鹽了，也就是氯化鈉（NaCl）。

This is work done at the smallest of scales, with researchers able to get a thin film of hexagonal salt to form on top of a layer of diamond, due to the chemical interaction of both film and diamond substrate – something the team actually predicted would happen in advance through simulations.

這是最精細的工作，研究人員在金剛石上製成六角形的鹽薄膜，利用的是薄膜和金剛石基體之間的化學相互作用，這一作用該團隊其實提前通過模擬就預測到了。

It's the latest in a series of discoveries where scientists have been able to synthesise 2D materials with unusual crystal structures, and it's partly this self-imposed restriction to two dimensions that is enabling new and exotic structures to be formed.

這是科學家利用不尋常的晶體結構合成二維材料的最新發現，在一定程度上，這種對二維空間的自我限制促成了新的奇異結構的形成。

"Initially we decided to perform only a computational study of the formation of new 2D structures on different substrates, driven by the hypothesis that if a substrate interacts strongly with the NaCl thin film, one can expect major changes in the structure of the thin film," says material scientist Kseniya Tikhomirova from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) in Russia.

俄羅斯斯科爾科沃科技學院材料科學家Kseniya Tikhomirova說：“最初我們決定僅對不同基底上新的二維結構的形成進行計算研究，我們的假設是如果一種襯底與氯化鈉薄膜產生強烈的相互作用，我們就能預測到薄膜的結構會有重大變化。”

"Indeed, we obtained very interesting results and predicted the formation of a hexagonal NaCl film on the diamond substrate, and decided to perform experiments. Thanks to our colleagues who performed the experiments, we synthesised this hexagonal NaCl, which proves our theory."

“我們得到了非常有趣的結果，預測到了金剛石基板上會形成六角形氯化鈉膜，並決定進行實驗。通過做實驗的同事們的努力，我們合成了這個六邊形的氯化鈉，證明了我們的理論。”