Watching chemistry - as it happens
Imagine trying to examine something in a highly inflammable hydrogen atmosphere and then turning up the heat.
This is one of the difficulties scientists must overcome when studying chemical reactions in materials that might be used in new energy devices, including some types of fuel cells.
Now, for the first time, a team of European scientists including Professor Peter Battle (University of Oxford), Dr Mona Bahout (University of Rennes) and Dr Paul Henry (Institut Laue Langevin (ILL)), has demonstrated that such experiments are not only possible, they can be done in real time while the reactions happen – even in the environmentally demanding conditions within the shell of a nuclear reactor.
“If you do it the old fashioned way you know what you’ve got at the beginning and at the end,” said Professor Battle, “but you don’t know how you got from one to the other. Our experiment showed how it happened. We studied the sample under an atmosphere of diluted hydrogen as we increased the temperature to 700 degrees C and then cooled it back down again.”
The research used neutron diffraction to examine the material at ILL in Grenoble. It demonstrated that information could be gathered in situ and in extreme environments as high quality data were produced even when using hot flowing hydrogen.
This important technique also opens the possibility for many more similar systems to be studied under a hydrogen atmosphere and will help the search for materials suitable for use in solid-oxide fuel cells and other energy-related technologies.
Chemical research information
- The researchers demonstrated a new way of studying chemical reactions
- These findings will improve our understanding of how materials react under hot flowing hydrogen
- This research has potential applications in solid oxide fuel cells
- STFC funds the UK membership of the ILL
Page last updated: 31 July 2009
by Jane Binks
