80 years late, scientists finally turn hydrogen into a metal

The big hurdle? The pressure kept breaking the diamonds

needed.
John Timmer (US) - 29/1/2017, 14:35

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If you don't go far enough in chemistry, it's easy to get the impression that metallicity is an innate
property of certain elements. But "metallic" is simply defined as substances with electrons that
can move around easily. These electrons give metals properties like good conductivity and an
opaque, shiny appearance. But these traits are not exclusive to specific elements; carbon
nanotubes can be metallic, and elements like sulfur become metallic under sufficient pressure.

In 1935, scientists predicted that the simplest element, hydrogen, could also become metallic
under pressure, and they calculated that it would take 25 GigaPascals to force this transition
(each Gigapascal is about 10,000 atmospheres of pressure). That estimate, in the words of the
people who have finally made metallic hydrogen, "was way off." It took until last year for us to
reach pressures where the normal form of hydrogen started breaking down into individual atoms
at 380 GigaPascals. Now, a pair of Harvard researchers has upped the pressure quite a bit
more, and they have finally made hydrogen into a metal.
Further Reading
New study hints that were closing in on metallic hydrogen

All of these high-pressure studies rely on what are called diamond anvils. This hardware places
small samples between two diamonds, which are hard enough to stand up to extreme pressure.
As the diamonds are forced together, the pressure keeps going up.
Current calculations suggested that metallic hydrogen might require just a slight boost in
pressure from the earlier work, at pressures as low as 400 GigaPascals. But the researchers
behind the new work, Ranga Dias and Isaac Silvera, discovered it needed quite a bit more than
that. In making that discovery, they also came to a separate realization: normal diamonds weren't
up to the task. "Diamond failure," they note, "is the principal limitation for achieving the
required pressures to observe SMH," where SMH means "solid metallic hydrogen" rather than
"shaking my head."
The team came up with some ideas about what might be causing the diamonds to fail and
corrected them. One possibility was surface defects, so they etched all diamonds down by five
microns to eliminate these. Another problem may be that hydrogen under pressure could be
forced into the diamond itself, weakening it. So they cooled the hydrogen to slow diffusion and
added material to the anvil that absorbed free hydrogen. Shining lasers through the diamond
seemed to trigger failures, so they switched to other sources of light to probe the sample.
After loading the sample and cranking up the pressure (literallythey turned a handcrank), they
witnessed hydrogen's breakdown at high pressure, which converted it from a clear sample to a
black substance, as had been described previously. But then, somewhere between 465 and 495
GigaPascals, the sample turned reflective, a key feature of metals.
The authors have no way of telling whether the metallic substance is a solid or liquid. They
expect solid based on theoretical considerations, but all they know for sure is that it's 15 times
denser than hydrogen chilled to 15K, which is what they put into the diamond anvil.
One result they do have is that there was no change in appearance even as they allowed the
sample to warm up to 83K. That's intriguing, because some theoretical work has suggested that
metallic hydrogen could be metastable, meaning it will remain metallic even as the pressure and

temperature that forced it there is released. That will definitely be something worth checking into
in more detail. Other calculations suggest it will be superconducting, but that hasn't been looked
at yet at all.
These sorts of details will probably have to wait until we've overcome what the authors term a
"looming challenge"producing metallic hydrogen in sufficient quantities to study it in detail.
Still, we've waited 80 years just to see the stuff. We can probably afford to be patient for a bit
more.

Metallic hydrogen, once theory, becomes

reality!
By PTI | Updated: Jan 29, 2017, 01.24 PM IST
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A room temperature superconductor could

radically change our transportation system, making magnetic levitation of high-speed trains
possible.
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BOSTON: Nearly a century after it was theorised, Harvard scientists claim to have succeeded in
creating the rarest and potentially one of the most valuable materials on the planet - atomic
metallic hydrogen.
In addition to helping scientists answer fundamental questions about the nature of matter, the

material is theorised to have a wide range of applications, including as a room-temperature

superconductor.
"This is the holy grail of high-pressure physics," said Professor Isaac Silvera from Harvard
University in the US.
"It's the first-ever sample of metallic hydrogen on Earth, so when you're looking at it, you're
looking at something that's never existed before," said Silvera.
To create it, researchers squeezed a tiny hydrogen sample at 495 gigapascal, or more than 71.7
million pounds-per-square inch - greater than the pressure at the centre of the Earth.
At those extreme pressures, solid molecular hydrogen breaks down and the tightly bound
molecules dissociate to transform into atomic hydrogen, which is a metal, Silvera said.
While the research offers an important new window into understanding the general properties of
hydrogen, it also offers tantalising hints at potentially revolutionary new materials.
"One prediction that's very important is metallic hydrogen is predicted to be meta-stable," Silvera
said.
"That means if you take the pressure off, it will stay metallic, similar to the way diamonds form
from graphite under intense heat and pressure, but remains a diamond when that pressure and
heat is removed," he said.
Understanding whether the material is stable is important, Silvera said, because predictions
suggest metallic hydrogen could act as a superconductor at room temperatures.
"That would be revolutionary. As much as 15 per cent of energy is lost to dissipation during
transmission, so if you could make wires from this material and use them in the electrical grid, it
could change that story," he said.
Among the holy grails of physics, a room temperature superconductor could radically change our
transportation system, making magnetic levitation of high-speed trains possible, as well as
making electric cars more efficient and improving the performance of many electronic devices,
said Ranga Dias, post-doctoral fellow at Harvard.
The material could also provide major improvements in energy production and storage - because
superconductors have zero resistance energy could be stored by maintaining currents in
superconducting coils, and then be used when needed.
Though it has the potential to transform life on Earth, metallic hydrogen could also play a key
role in helping humans explore the far reaches of space, as the most powerful rocket propellant
yet discovered, researchers said.
"It takes a tremendous amount of energy to make metallic hydrogen," Silvera said.

"And if you convert it back to molecular hydrogen, all that energy is released, so it would make
it the most powerful rocket propellant known to man, and could revolutionise rocketry," he said.
The most powerful fuels in use today are characterised by a "specific impulse" - a measure, in
seconds, of how fast a propellant is fired from the back of a rocket - of 450 seconds. The specific
impulse for metallic hydrogen, by comparison, is theorised to be 1,700 seconds.
"That would easily allow you to explore the outer planets. We would be able to put rockets into
orbit with only one stage, versus two, and could send up larger payloads, so it could be very
important," Silvera said.
To create the new material, Silvera and Dias turned to one of the hardest materials on Earth diamond.
Rather than natural diamond, Silvera and Dias used two small pieces of carefully polished
synthetic diamond which were then treated to make them even tougher and then mounted
opposite each other in a device known as a diamond anvil cell.
"Diamonds are polished with diamond powder, and that can gouge out carbon from the surface.
When we looked at the diamond using atomic force microscopy, we found defects, which could
cause it to weaken and break," Silvera said.
The solution, he said, was to use a reactive ion etching process to shave a tiny layer - just five
microns thick, or about one-tenth of a human hair - from the diamond's surface.
The diamonds were then coated with a thin layer of alumina to prevent the hydrogen from
diffusing into their crystal structure and embrittling them.
The research was published in the journal Science.