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Synthesis of sodium polyhydrides at high pressures.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Struzhkin, Viktor V 
Kim, Duck Young 
Stavrou, Elissaios 
Muramatsu, Takaki 
Mao, Ho-Kwang 

Abstract

The only known compound of sodium and hydrogen is archetypal ionic NaH. Application of high pressure is known to promote states with higher atomic coordination, but extensive searches for polyhydrides with unusual stoichiometry have had only limited success in spite of several theoretical predictions. Here we report the first observation of the formation of polyhydrides of Na (NaH3 and NaH7) above 40 GPa and 2,000 K. We combine synchrotron X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy in a laser-heated diamond anvil cell and theoretical random structure searching, which both agree on the stable structures and compositions. Our results support the formation of multicenter bonding in a material with unusual stoichiometry. These results are applicable to the design of new energetic solids and high-temperature superconductors based on hydrogen-rich materials.

Description

Keywords

cond-mat.mtrl-sci, cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Journal Title

Nat Commun

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1723
2041-1723

Volume Title

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Rights

Attribution 4.0 International
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/J017639/1)
High pressure experiments were supported by DOE/BES under contracts No. DE-FG02- 02ER45955 and DE-FG02-99ER45775. DuckYoung Kim and T. Muramatsu acknowledge salary support by Energy Frontier Research in Extreme Environments Center (EFree), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science under Award Number DE-SC0001057. C. J. Pickard and R. J. Needs were supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of the UK. E. Stavrou and A. F. Goncharov acknowledge support of DARPA under contracts No. W31P4Q1310005 and No. W31P4Q1210008. A. F. Goncharov acknowledges support of NSFC (No. 21473211). Portions of this work were performed at GeoSoilEnviroCARS (Sector 13), Advanced Photon Source (APS), Argonne National Laboratory. GeoSoilEnviroCARS is supported by the National Science Foundation - Earth Sciences (EAR-1128799) and Department of Energy - Geosciences (DE-FG02- 94ER14466). Use of the Advanced Photon Source was supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.