News
EU approves formation of world’s
largest aluminium company
Above: Rusal’s flat ingot
cutting line – Aluminium
Division
RUSAL, SUAL Group
and Glencore welcomed
the decision by the
New super-thin technology
European Commission
to grant clearance for
Researchers have used the world’s
the transaction to create
thinnest material to create a new
United Company RUSAL.
type of technology, which could be
The company, which
will consolidate RUSAL,
used to make super-fast electronic
SUAL and alumina assets
components.
of Glencore will be the
Physicists at The University of
world’s leading aluminium
Manchester and The Max-Planck
and alumina producer. Institute in Germany have created
The merger was a new kind of a membrane that is
announced in October
only one atom thick. It’s believed
2006 and notification of the
that this super-small structure
approval was announced by
can be used to sieve gases, make Professor Andre Geim
the European Commission
ultra-fast electronic switches and
on 1 February 2007. Under
A metallic scaffold was placed on “We have made proof-of-concept
the terms of the merger
image individual molecules with
agreement, RUSAL’s
unprecedented accuracy.
top of a sheet of graphene, which devices and believe the technology
shareholder will own 66%
The fi ndings of the research
was placed on a silicon chip. The transfer to other areas should be
of the new company, with
team was published on 1 March
chip was then dissolved in acids, straightforward. However, the real
SUAL’s shareholders owning 2007 in the journal Nature.
leaving the graphene hanging challenge is to make such mem-
22% and Glencore 12%. Two years ago, scientists discov- freely in air or a vacuum from the branes cheap and readily available
Russia’s Federal
ered a new class of materials that
scaffold. The resulting membranes for large-scale applications.”
Antimonopoly Service (FAS)
can be viewed as individual atomic
are the thinnest material possible In addition to Meyer and Geim,
granted clearance for the
planes pulled out of bulk crystals.
and maintain a remarkably high researchers involved in this work
transaction to create United
These one-atom-thick materials and
quality. include Kostya Novoselov and
Company RUSAL on 14
Professor Geim – who works Tim Booth from The University of
February 2007.
in particular graphene – a gauze
The combined company
of carbon atoms resembling chicken
in the School of Physics and Astron- Manchester, Mikhail Katsnelson
will own bauxite mining,
wire – have rapidly become one of
omy at The University of Manches- from The University of Nijmegen
alumina refinery, aluminium
the hottest topics in physics.
ter – and his fellow researchers in the Netherlands, and Sigmar
smelting and foil production However, it has remained doubt-
have also found the reason for the Roth of The Max Plank Institute in
facilities. The new company ful whether such materials can exist stability of such atomically-thin Germany.
becomes the world’s largest
in the free state, without being
materials, which were previ- The research of Professor
aluminium and alumina
placed on top of other materials.
ously presumed to be impossible. Geim, Dr Kostya Novoselov and
producer, employing more
Now an international research
They report that graphene is not colleagues at the University of
than 110,000 people in
team, led by Dr Jannik Meyer of The
perfectly fl at but instead gently Manchester led to the discovery of
seventeen countries on five
continents.
Max-Planck Institute in Germany
crumpled out of plane, which helps a new class of materials called two-
The company will account
and Professor Andre Geim of The
stabilise otherwise intrinsically dimensional atomic crystals back in
for approximately 12.5%
University of Manchester, has man-
unstable ultra-thin matter. 2004. Professor Geim was recently
of global aluminium and
aged to make free-hanging graph-
“This is a completely new type of awarded the 2007 Mott Medal and
16% of global alumina ene. The team used a combination
technology – even nanotechnology Prize by The Institute of Physics
production. The annual of microfabrication techniques used, is not the right word to describe for his discovery of graphene and
volume of production will
for example, in the manufacturing
these new membranes,” said his ‘remarkable contribution’ to
be approximately 4 million
of microprocessors.
Professor Geim. science.
tonnes of aluminium and 11
million tonnes of alumina.
12 March/April 2007 International Sheet Metal Review
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