Is This UT-Dallas Discovery Pop Art Or Nanotechnology?

A team of researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas went looking for new nanotechnologies for future, tiny, energy-efficient transistors, but accidentally found a pattern that looks like a Warhol-esque American flag.The team has been studying whether various materials work as tiny conductors on an atomic level. While studying an atomically thin sheet of the chemical compound molybdenum ditelluride, graduate students Chenxi Zhang, Qingxiao Wang and Hui Zhu noticed an unexpected phase change that turned the strings of atoms into star or flower-like shapes.  Continue reading...