人类首次造出六边形的盐

While it probably won't make it to your dining table, a new scientific achievement might be able to help in everything from radar equipment to electric cars: scientists have been able to form salt, aka sodium chloride (NaCl), in a hexagonal shape.

虽然这个新的科技成果可能不会登上你的餐桌，但可能会对很多领域有所帮助，如雷达设备、电动汽车等。科学家已经能合成六边形的盐了，也就是氯化钠（NaCl）。

This is work done at the smallest of scales, with researchers able to get a thin film of hexagonal salt to form on top of a layer of diamond, due to the chemical interaction of both film and diamond substrate – something the team actually predicted would happen in advance through simulations.

这是最精细的工作，研究人员在金刚石上制成六角形的盐薄膜，利用的是薄膜和金刚石基体之间的化学相互作用，这一作用该团队其实提前通过模拟就预测到了。

It's the latest in a series of discoveries where scientists have been able to synthesise 2D materials with unusual crystal structures, and it's partly this self-imposed restriction to two dimensions that is enabling new and exotic structures to be formed.

这是科学家利用不寻常的晶体结构合成二维材料的最新发现，在一定程度上，这种对二维空间的自我限制促成了新的奇异结构的形成。

"Initially we decided to perform only a computational study of the formation of new 2D structures on different substrates, driven by the hypothesis that if a substrate interacts strongly with the NaCl thin film, one can expect major changes in the structure of the thin film," says material scientist Kseniya Tikhomirova from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) in Russia.

俄罗斯斯科尔科沃科技学院材料科学家Kseniya Tikhomirova说：“最初我们决定仅对不同基底上新的二维结构的形成进行计算研究，我们的假设是如果一种衬底与氯化钠薄膜产生强烈的相互作用，我们就能预测到薄膜的结构会有重大变化。”

"Indeed, we obtained very interesting results and predicted the formation of a hexagonal NaCl film on the diamond substrate, and decided to perform experiments. Thanks to our colleagues who performed the experiments, we synthesised this hexagonal NaCl, which proves our theory."

“我们得到了非常有趣的结果，预测到了金刚石基板上会形成六角形氯化钠膜，并决定进行实验。通过做实验的同事们的努力，我们合成了这个六边形的氯化钠，证明了我们的理论。”