Copper Into Gold: How Chinese Scientists Turned Cheap Copper Into Material Almost Identical to Gold

Chinese researchers have newly discovered a method to turn copper into a material with similar properties to gold.

Now, talk about a get-rich-quick scheme. But the purpose of their study is not to make counterfeit gold, rather this method could significantly reduce the use of rare, expensive metals in factories.

Professor Sun Jian and colleagues at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Liaoning, shot a copper target with a jet of hot, electrically charged argon gas.

The fast-moving ionised particles blasted copper atoms off the target. The atoms cooled down and condensed on the surface of a collecting device, producing a thin layer of sand.

The researchers put the material in a reaction chamber and used it as a catalyst to turn coal to alcohol, a sophisticated and difficult chemical process that only precious metals can handle efficiently.

“The copper nano particles achieved catalytic performance extremely similar to that of gold or silver,” Sun and collaborators said in a statement posted on the academy’s website on Saturday.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)