Hidden "in-between" materials could help make better batteries and solar fuels
Chemists at Warwick and Birmingham tracked molecules as they were heated into materials and found unknown in-between phases, including a new form of bismuth vanadate and a compound that stores lithium.
Chemists at the University of Warwick and the University of Birmingham have found previously unknown materials by tracking what happens while molecules are heated to make a final product, the University of Warwick said. The study was published in Nature Communications.
Looking between "A" and "B"
Materials made by heating are usually judged only by the final product. The team instead followed specially designed "single-source precursors", molecules that contain all the elements needed for a material, as they broke down during heating, and found a series of hidden intermediate stages.
“When materials are made by heating, scientists usually focus on the final product, the ‘B’ that results from ‘A.’ But this study shows that there are many fascinating stages in between ‘A’ and ‘B,’ and these hidden steps, could be just as important.” — Dr Sebastian Pike, Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick
A new form of a solar-fuel material
One discovery was a new form of bismuth vanadate, named β-BiVO₄. Bismuth vanadate is valued for solar fuels because it absorbs sunlight well while still having enough energy to split water into hydrogen. The new form has a different atomic structure and a significantly larger band gap, so it handles light differently, which could open new ways to tune materials for solar fuels, catalysis and electronics.
Another intermediate material could store large amounts of lithium, suggesting possible uses in future batteries. The team identified the phases using solid-state NMR spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and pair distribution function analysis.
Early results from a few precursors
The work is at the discovery stage, and the team studied only a few precursors. Pike said carefully controlling temperature and precursor chemistry could reveal many more useful hidden materials. Clean hydrogen is a busy research field, with other approaches such as a light-driven material that makes hydrogen without a metal catalyst.
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