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Silicon crystal cooked to perfection

Pure lump of silicon-28 could help to redefine the kilogram.

Researchers are a step closer to redefining the kilogram, thanks to the creation of the purest chunk of crystalline silicon-28 yet made.

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Posted by Nicola Jones on May 29, 2007
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It seems intuitively obvious that as a metric holotype weight, a monocrystal of 99.999 pure 12 Carbon diamond of equal chemical purity would be as much an improvement over this excellent 28 silicon as it is over the poor and tired old platinum-iridium standard in the vault at Sevres.

But then, I cannot claim to be entirely disinterested in the present and future history of artifacts made out of just one kind of atom.

Was any consideration given to the two-element solution- the isotopic purification step is unnecessary if the starting element or elements are by nature mononuclidic.

For example, both aluminum and fluorine have but one stable isotope, and mononuclidic AlF3is about as chemically inert and mechanically robust as ionic solids get. And being
utterly transparent, amenable to optical metrology and stoichiometry determination if atom counting is the preferred mass metric

Posted by: Russell Seitz | May 30, 2007 07:06 AM

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