How thin can you make a coat of paint? #physics #experimentalphysics #universityofwarwick

How thin can you make a coat of paint? My name's Professor Gavin Bell. I'm an experimental physicist at the University of Warick. If you wanted to make a really nice smooth, thin coat of paint, you might use a spray can. This is shooting tiny droplets, but each of those droplets, even though they're really small, contain millions and millions of molecules. We do something very similar except we get rid of all the air. We make a vacuum in one of these vacuum chambers and we shoot not droplets but individual atoms and molecules through the vacuum onto our surface. Here we're not using paint. We are shooting beams of atoms and molecules which make very thin materials which are then used in all your electronic devices, your PlayStation, your phone, your TV. Now, these materials just don't work unless they're very, very pure. Which is why we use these complicated vacuum systems, which keep everything extremely clean.