Creating a super battery

Choong-Shik Yoo, seen here with students, chemical Washington State University has used high pressure to create a compact, never-seen material capable of storing large amounts of energy.

Credit: Washington State University

With high pressures similar to those found deep in the Earth or a giant planet, Washington State University scientists have created a compact, never-seen material capable of storing large amounts of energy.

"If you think, is a more condensed form storage out of nuclear energy," says Yoo Choong-Shik, a Professor of chemistry at the WSU and main author of results in the journal Nature chemistry
Research is basic science, but Yoo says that it shows that it is possible to store mechanical energy into chemical energy of a material with such strong chemical bonds.Potential future applications include the creation of a new class of materials energy or fuel, energy, materials storage device oxidants super to destroy chemical and biological agents and high temperature superconductors.

Scientists create material in the Pullman campus in a cell of anvil diamond, small, two inches by three inches in diameter capable of producing extremely high pressures in a small footprint device.The cell contains fluoride Xenon (XeF2), a white glass used to etch conductive silicon, between two small diamond anvils.

At normal atmospheric pressure, material molecules remain relatively far apart from each otros.Pero as scientists increased pressure inside the camera, the material became a graphite - like bidimensional.Finalmente semiconductor, scientists increased pressure more than a million of atmospheres, comparable to find half way to the center of the tierra.Todo this "press," as called Yoo, forced molecules that closely dependent three-dimensional metal "network structures."In the process, the enormous amount of mechanical power compression stores like chemical energy molecules bonds.