More on Xe - H compounds...

A few days ago there was a on this article on Xe/H compounds that form under very high pressure. Here's more from an article at Chemistry World.

American chemists at the Carnegie Institute of Washington in Washington, D.C., have created a very unusual compound that combines hydrogen and xenon at very high pressures. Over the years, despite the normal absence of reactivity that the noble gases exhibit, scientists have found ways to create noble gas compounds. Unfortunately, many of these structures are disordered and arranged in ways that end up minimizing the volume and energy of the structure. The hydrogen-xenon compound, however, began readily forming at pressures around 40,000 atmospheres, with the xenon atoms being surrounded by dumbbell shaped, freely rotating hydrogen molecules. Amazingly, the structure maintained its integrity even when exposed to a crushing pressure of 2.5 million atmospheres.

This discovery could be influential to chemical sciences because not only does it open up new methods of experimentation with noble gases, but it also could help explain the xenon deficit that we find in our planet's atmosphere.


Model of Xe(H2)7

Posted by Jared Liston