{"id":236728,"date":"2026-05-07T22:09:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/researchers-combine-five-metals-to-build-a-better-nanocrystal"},"modified":"2026-05-07T22:09:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:09:36","slug":"researchers-combine-five-metals-to-build-a-better-nanocrystal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/researchers-combine-five-metals-to-build-a-better-nanocrystal","title":{"rendered":"Researchers combine five metals to build a better nanocrystal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-combine-five-metals-to-build-a-better-nanocrystal2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A nanocrystal is an extraordinarily tiny piece of material\u2014composed of anywhere from a few to a few thousand atoms\u2014in which atoms are arranged in a precise, ordered structure. Think of it like taking a piece of gold and shrinking it down to the size of a few hundred atoms. It\u2019s still gold, still crystalline, just almost incomprehensibly small.<\/p>\n<p>Nanocrystals are in the transistors inside computers and smartphones, in smartphone displays and TV screens, in the gold-nanoparticle sensors that power COVID and pregnancy tests, and in the pipes of your car exhaust system, among countless other innovations.<\/p>\n<p>Their small size gives them a dramatically higher ratio of surface area to volume, making them especially useful as catalysts\u2014materials that speed up chemical reactions without being consumed in the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A nanocrystal is an extraordinarily tiny piece of material\u2014composed of anywhere from a few to a few thousand atoms\u2014in which atoms are arranged in a precise, ordered structure. Think of it like taking a piece of gold and shrinking it down to the size of a few hundred atoms. It\u2019s still gold, still crystalline, just [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1523,1512,4,48,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-computing","category-mobile-phones","category-nanotechnology","category-particle-physics","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236728","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=236728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}