The world's tiniest homage to the Olympic Games was unveiled Monday by British scientists — a five-ringed molecule 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
While games sponsors have been accused of using heavy-handed tactics to clamp down on the reproduction of the event's famous logo, even they are unlikely to contest the Olympicene, a single molecule created using synthetic organic chemistry.
Professor Graham Richards, a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, explained the mini-Olympics tribute's humble origins.
"When doodling in a planning meeting, it occurred to me that a molecular structure with three hexagonal rings above two others would make for an interesting synthetic challenge," Richards said.
His idea came to life on an atomic scale after a collaboration among the RSC, the University of Warwick and IBM Research Zurich, and the five-ringed structure was captured using scanning tunneling microscopy.
Warwick's Dr. David Fox added, "Alongside the scientific challenge involved in creating olympicene in a laboratory, there's some serious practical reasons for working with molecules like this. The compound is related to single-layer graphite, also known as graphene, and is one of a number of related compounds which potentially have interesting electronic and optical properties."
He added, "For example, these types of molecules may offer great potential for the next generation of solar cells and high-tech lighting sources, such as LEDs."
