Elusive predicted water structure created in lab

Jul 30 () –

Scientists at Yokohama National University have succeeded in creating in the laboratory an elusive structure of the water molecule predicted theoretically.

The clathrate hydrates They are complex water structures containing foreign guest molecules within a layer of guest water molecules.

The new stable form of clathrate hydrate synthesized in the may play a important role in future research in material sciencethem, according to researchers.

Water molecules are made up of just three atoms: two hydrogen atoms bonded to a single oxygen atom. Individual water molecules can bond weakly to each other and to other molecules, which changes their collective physicochemical properties.

Clathrate hydrates, in particular, are networks of water molecules that self-assemble around host substances to create hydrogen-bonded structuresThese structures belong to the Frank-Kasper (FK) phases due to their geometric arrangement as close-packed tetrahedra. Surprisingly, the structure is formed entirely by weak bonds between water and guest molecules, making some predicted clathrate hydrate structures very difficult to synthesize.

The HS-I structure is one such clathrate hydrate phase that generates hexagonal crystals. A previous study had reported a metastable form of the HS-I structure, but researchers had not been able to find a stable form.

To address this question, a team of chemical engineers and crystallographers from Yokohama National University and the National Institute of Advanced Scientific and Industrial Technology (AIST) in Japan generated a stable form of HS-I clathrate hydrate and analyzed the true structure of the HS-I form.

“The hexagonal structure, one of the three primitive structures [FK] of clathrate hydrates, can be arranged geometrically, but it is thermodynamically unstable and has not been created in practice. “We created a substance that fits into the key part of this structure and managed to stabilize the hexagonal structure using this material,” said Sanehiro Muromachi, associate professor at the Graduate School of Engineering at Yokohama National University.

The team published the study in Science Advances.