Superatoms – clusters of atoms that have the power to mimic the properties of other elements – have been linked up to make molecules for the first time. These could be the building blocks for advanced magnetic materials and electronics.

Chemists began building superatoms when they discovered that certain arrangements of atoms can behave like scaled-up versions of a single atom of a different kind. These superatoms pool their electrons into shells around a central core, and since such shells determine the chemical properties of an atom, the superatom takes on those characteristics. “In a regular atom, the atom has its own properties,” says Shiv Khanna at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, one of the pioneers of superatom research. But since superatoms are made up of many particles, you can swap out some of the parts to get new features, he says. “Nature doesn’t provide these kinds of things.”

Now a team led by Xavier Roy at Columbia University, New York, has taken the concept one step further by constructing pairs or trios of superatoms – the simplest kind of superatom molecule possible.

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