Molecular prison forces diatomic inmates to cell floor
Organic prison too crowded for molecular inmates to move about freely
A team of scientists including Carnegie’s Tim Strobel and Venkata Bhadram now report unexpected quantum behavior of hydrogen molecules, H2, trapped within tiny cages made of organic molecules, demonstrating that the structure of the cage influences the behavior of the molecule imprisoned inside it.
A detailed understanding of the physics of individual atoms interacting with each other at the microscopic level can lead to the discovery of novel emergent phenomena, help guide the synthesis of new materials, and even aid future drug development.
But at the atomic scale, the classical, so-called Newtonian, rules of physics you learned in school don’t apply. In the arena of the ultra-small, different rules, governed by quantum mechanics, are needed to understand interactions between atoms where energy is discrete, or non-continuous, and where position is inherently uncertain.
The research team – including Anibal Ramirez-Cuesta, Luke Daemen, and Yongqiang Cheng of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, as well as Timothy Jenkins and Craig Brown of the National Institute of Standards and Technology-used spectroscopic tools, including the state-of-the-art inelastic neutron spectrometer called VISION at the Spallation Neutron Source, to examine the atomic-level dynamics of a special kind of molecular structure called a clathrate.
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