World's Thinnest Sheet of Glass Invented on Accident

The world's thinnest sheet of glass is just a molecule thick, setting a new world record set to appear in the Guinness Worlds Records 2014 Edition.

As so often the case, the invention was a serendipitous, born during the pursuit of something else altogether.

The researchers, from Cornell University and Germany's University of Ulm, were making graphene, a 2D sheet of carbon atoms in chicken wire crystal formation, on copper foils in a quartz furnace when they noticed some kind of "muck" on it.

Examining the substance closer, they realized they had accidentally created a substance composed of the same ingredients that glass is comprised of -- silicone and oxygen.

The researchers concluded that the glass was created when an air leak triggered a reaction with the copper and quartz, which is also made of silicon and oxygen.

Besides the novelty of being the world's thinnest glass, the accidental experiment addresses a decades-old question regarding the nature of glass. Unable to see it directly, researchers have struggled with the fact that glass behaves like a solid but was thought to look more like a liquid. In the new "pane" of glass, however, the individual silicon and oxygen atoms are visible via electron microscopy, allowing the scientists to peer inside. The resulting picture is one strikingly familiar to the diagram drawn in 1932 by W.H. Zachariasen, which has long served as a theoretical representation of the arrangement of atoms found in glass.

The researchers further speculate that the 2D glass could one day be used in transistors, improving the performance of processors found in computers and smartphones.

"This is the work that, when I look back at my career, I will be most proud of," Muller said. "It's the first time that anyone has been able to see the arrangement of atoms in a glass."