Translated material
Storage under pressure
A material has been created to accumulate huge amounts of energy
Using ultra-high pressure, scientists from Washington State University have created a material that can store energy better than any other capacitors and batteries known to science.“This is the most condensed form of energy storage, apart from nuclear energy,” says the author of the invention, Chun Shik Yu, a professor of chemistry.
The study, published in the journal Nature Chemistry, according to Professor Yu, shows that mechanical energy can be stored as chemical energy in a material with very strong intermolecular bonds. The scope of potential application of Professor Yu's invention is very wide: these include new classes of energy materials and fuels, energy storage devices, superoxidizers capable of destroying a variety of chemical and biological agents, high-temperature superconductors, and much more.
Chun Shik Yu and his assistants created their miracle material in a diamond anvil, a small cylinder-shaped chamber 7.5 cm in diameter and 5 cm in height, where very high pressures can be created in very small areas. The scientists placed xenon difluoride (XeF2), a crystalline solid formed by fluorine and xenon atoms and one of the most stable xenon compounds, between two diamond anvils. At normal pressure the molecules are relatively far apart, but as the pressure in the chamber increases they begin to move closer together. First, xenon difluoride is modified into a two-dimensional semiconductor similar to graphite.
Californian chemists managed to achieve pressure exceeding 1 million atmospheres. About the same pressure halfway to the center of our planet. The supercompression caused the xenon difluoride molecules to eventually transform into tightly compressed three-dimensional metallic structures. Moreover, during the compression process, huge volumes of mechanical energy were stored in the substance in the form of chemical energy of intermolecular bonds.