Friday, February 12, 2010

Crystal twins hint at hydrogen storage breakthrough

Even apparently identical twins can differ in their appetite. The discovery of two crystals identical in appearance and chemical formula – and even with the same crystal symmetry – turn out to differ wildly in their capacity for storing hydrogen, much to the surprise of the chemists who made them.

The finding hints that there may be a previously unknown class of crystals that would be useful for gas storage or catalysis.
Hong-Cai Zhou at Texas A&M University in College Station and colleagues discovered the new crystal forms as part of their search for materials that will hold large quantities of hydrogen or methane to act as future fuel tanks. Like rival teams, they are concentrating on a family of crystalline compounds of metal ions and organic molecules called metal organic frameworks. Read more.

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