28.07.2009 – Transparent aluminium, previously know to science fiction afficianados through the movie series Star Trek, has now become a reality, albeit on a small scale: Scientists from the University of Oxford have succeeded in creating a transparent form of aluminium by subjecting the light metal to a high-intensity treatment with the world’s most powerful soft x-ray laser.

By “knocking out” a core electron from every aluminium atom, but without destroying the metal’s crystalline structure, the scientists have managed to produce a metal that is “nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet vision”, a press release by the University of Oxford says. The area Professor Justin Wark of the Department of Physics and his colleagues have transformed equals a spot with a diameter of a twentieth of a human hair. “In certain respects, the way it reacts is as though we had changed every aluminium atom into silicon: it’s almost as surprising as finding you can turn lead into gold with light” Wark says.

Professor Wark and the co-authors of an article published in this weeks’ edition of Nature Physics hope to gain a better understanding of conditions inside large planets, to which that of transparent aluminium is relevant, the scientists say according to the press release. They also expect to obtain a clearer picture of what occurs during the formation of “miniature stars”.

The source of radiation which enabled the scientists to make their discovery was a so-called FLASH-laser based in Hamburg. It is ten billion times brighter than any available synchrotron, Oxford University writes. Its extremely brief pulses of light are more powerful than the output of a power plant needed to supply a city with electricity.