"Superatoms" Mimic Elements: Research Reveals New Perspective of Periodic Table | Hacker News Reader

"Superatoms" Mimic Elements: Research Reveals New Perspective of Periodic Table

science.psu.edu

44 pointsujjwalg16 comments

"It looks like we can predict which combinations of elemental atoms mimic other elemental atoms," he said. "For example, by looking at the periodic table, you can predict that titanium monoxide will be a superatom of nickel. Simply start at titanium, which has four outer-shell electrons, and move six elements to the right, because atomic oxygen possesses six outer-shell electrons. The element you end up on is nickel, whose 10 outer-shell electrons make it isoelectronic with the 10 outer-shell electron molecule resulting from the combination of titanium and oxygen. We thought this finding must be a curious coincidence, so we tried it with other atoms and we found that a pattern emerged."

It's curious how genius appears obvious in hindsight.

I thought that's why the periodic table was setup to look like it does in the first place. AKA right side are the noble gases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_gas

And on the left side the alkali metals Rubidium, Sodium and Lithium all both useful for batteries. (Lithium is significantly lighter, but Rubidium is more abundant etc.)

What the article says is TiO (a molecule aka superatom) mimics Ni (an atom). The group is trying to add another layer of molecules (superatoms) over the 2D periodic table.

Disclosure: I was a graduate student of Dr. Castleman.

Hey awesome, I saw some people from your group speak at a conference a while ago and I was really intrigued by this idea. Especially the idea of making superatom analogues of Alali-Halide crystals. i.e. taking closed shell Al cluster cations and anions and packing them into an ionic crystal. What's the inside word on efforts to actually fabricate these things? Are they still just theoretical? Could you make them with a ion cluster beam and doing deposition after mass filtering it?

The problem is not making them but making them in enough quantities to be actually used for applications. A lot of the current research efforts are in pursuit of depositing them on a surface in our group.

FTA: "This research was funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research."

Interesting to see the kind of practical basic research being done by the military. Their website is interesting: http://www.wpafb.af.mil/AFRL/afosr/

Hasn't a lot of scientific advance come about as a direct result of military research?

You are using the result of military research right now

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

DOD branches fund lots of "basic applied science" research.

I could see applications of this being very useful for military and peaceful solutions, especially if superatom chemistry can replace the demand for rare-earth elements.

This is interesting, but it seems so simple that if it actually works (ie if you can actually substitute tungsten carbide for platinum or zirconium monoxide for palladium), it's quite surprising that no-one has noticed this before.

The superatoms share all the same properties than the original atom? I've plutonium & uranium in mind...

No.

But since most chemical properties of an atom are set by the outer valence shell, there is a good chance that the superatom will share many chemical properties with the mimiced atom.

Im sure that the military is curious about chain reactions and things like that.

No - radioactivity/nuclear reactions are properties of the nucleus of an atom, whereas the chemical properties mimicked by these "superatoms" are the result of their outer electrons.

I wonder if this could be used for better batteries, or capacitors?

Or how about for better superconductors?

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