{"id":222892,"date":"2025-10-04T04:23:30","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T09:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/ultra-thin-sodium-films-offer-low-cost-alternative-to-gold-and-silver-in-optical-technologies"},"modified":"2025-10-04T04:23:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T09:23:30","slug":"ultra-thin-sodium-films-offer-low-cost-alternative-to-gold-and-silver-in-optical-technologies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/ultra-thin-sodium-films-offer-low-cost-alternative-to-gold-and-silver-in-optical-technologies","title":{"rendered":"Ultra-thin sodium films offer low-cost alternative to gold and silver in optical technologies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ultra-thin-sodium-films-offer-low-cost-alternative-to-gold-and-silver-in-optical-technologies.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>From solar panels to next-generation medical devices, many emerging technologies rely on materials that can manipulate light with extreme precision. These materials\u2014called plasmonic materials\u2014are typically made from expensive metals like gold or silver. But what if a cheaper, more abundant metal could do the job just as well or better?<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the question a team of researchers set out to explore. The challenge? While <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/sodium\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">sodium<\/a> is abundant and lightweight, it\u2019s also notoriously unstable and difficult to work with in the presence of air or moisture\u2014two unavoidable parts of real-world conditions. Until now, this has kept it off the table for practical optical applications.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers from Yale University, Oakland University, and Cornell University have teamed up to change that. By developing a <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/10.1021\/acsnano.5c04946\" target=\"_blank\">new technique<\/a> for structuring sodium into ultra-thin, precisely patterned films, they found a way to stabilize the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/metal\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">metal<\/a> and make it perform exceptionally well in light-based applications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From solar panels to next-generation medical devices, many emerging technologies rely on materials that can manipulate light with extreme precision. These materials\u2014called plasmonic materials\u2014are typically made from expensive metals like gold or silver. But what if a cheaper, more abundant metal could do the job just as well or better? That\u2019s the question a team [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1633],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-solar-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}