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UCSB researchers discover hydrogen can form multicenter bonds

eurekalert.org — Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have shown that, under the right circumstances, hydrogen can form multicenter bonds, where one hydrogen atom simultaneously bonds to as many as four or six other atoms. Tested for hydrogen in metal oxides, the discovery could have a broad range of technological impact.

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  • theblooms, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21OK, I passed both P-Chems (though it was "only" undergraduate), and I didn't think this was possible in this Universe. I would LOVE to read the journal article that this blurb references. If this is peer reviewed and confirmed, this really is a miracle. It will change a LOT of chemistry in the world. Cool ain't the word.

    • freff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Same here. A simultaneous bond with up to 6 other atoms is pretty revolutionary to how I've always thought of as the way hydrogen behaves. I'd like to get a hold of that research article as well.
    • afx1, on 10/12/2007, -6/+28This helps my ping time how?
    • sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11If true this will create an exponential increase in the hydrogen divorce rate. And I had no idea hydrogen was a Mormon..
    • davesphone00, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1@sockpuppets

      Lol. So Hydrogen has been secretly practicing polygamy, what's the practical application of that?
    • Avogadro65, on 10/12/2007, -5/+23It means hydrogen is a dirty little whore.
    • WarpFox, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11If we allow hydrogen to marry however many atoms it wants, it will disrupt the very foundations that this country is founded upon and unmake society as we know it. We must make a constitutional amendment! Marridge is and has always been between one atom and however many electrons it has to offer.

      WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE
    • crweaks23, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@Avogadro65 -

      You're getting dugg down, but I laughed.
    • jsbarone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What does this finding mean to us non-chemists? How could one apply these findings to something and make it useful?
  • codyman, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11Apparently my nerd translator is broke and I was a crappy science student so I have no ***** clue what this means.. somebody, habla ingles?
    • UltimaNut, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3Yes...please.
    • jabbar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3a normal hydrogen atom will bond to at most one other atom. they somehow managed to bond 4 or 6 atoms. amazing.
    • tritium, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7The number and type of bond a particular atom is capable of has to do with the number of valence electrons present on a its outer-most electron shelf. As in the case of H, it has a single electron on a shelf that needs 2 to be complete. So, the hydrogen seeks out another atom to complete its shelf. If the hydrogen finds another hydrogen, for example, each bonds and they share the two electrons to form complete shelves for each. They don't need any more electrons to complete the shelf, so they don't attract any other atoms. If hydrogen suddenly began sharing its single electron many times over, that would basically throw the only shelf and valence electron idea out the window.
    • MasterFunk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I am very surprised by this, shouldn't this brake the rules of orbitals?
    • jerbaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3That's the case with an ionic bond, but a covalent bond wouldn't require throwing the whole valence electron theory at the window. Am I wrong?
    • UltimaNut, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Ok, thanks but what does this mean to Joe Six pack? Not being smart.
    • enivid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Si... Fly...
    • masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3If a visual is easier for anyone, try this:
      http://images.google.com/images?q=lewis%20dot%20structures%20hydrogen

      Notice that Hydrogen has one electron. As a general rule, electrons seek to be in pairs. So if a Hydrogen atom with one unpaired electron meets up with another atom with at least one unpaired electron, the unpaired electron on the Hydrogen atom and an unpaired electron on the other atom will bond and form a pair.

      Also, atoms generally never have more than 8 electrons, which means four pairs. There are plenty of exceptions to this rule, as some elements can bond to as many as six other atoms. However, these are exceptions, and to make Hydrogen, something with only ONE unpaired electron, bond to SIX different things is simply amazing.
    • jhshukla, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3wow! look at the 1600x768 **JPEG**: http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/476/488316/Instructor_Resources/Chapter_10/FG10_00-17un.JPG
    • Cr0z, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Actually, it's not uncommon in inorganic chemistry for hydrogen to form a 3-centre 2-electron bond, where the hydrogen atom acts as a bridge between two metal atoms, and is therefore bonded to two atoms. It is easily explained by Molecular Orbital theory, so it's not true to say hydrogen can only bond to one other atom, even without this new research.
  • imaskat, on 10/12/2007, -9/+4It means that translucent aluminum is now a possibility!
    • Pilot85, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Are you just messing with us? Does transparency/translucency have something to do with conductivity?
    • kurophoenix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think you mean transparent aluminum
  • Avogadro65, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7For a while my major in school was Chemical Engineering, but I ended up changing majors. I always had the sneaking suspicion that if I kept going with ChemE, everything I knew would one day be wrong.

    This, however, is crazy talk compared to the potential change in basic concepts that I imagined.
  • MioTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Damn. This just throws the standard chemistry answer of "available D-orbitals" out the window......
  • mathmanjeffy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Just further evidence to show that "truth" is relative to the era in which it is given...
  • theodicey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Can we start calling them Van de Walle bonds?
  • asancho, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Does this mean i can return my old chemistry midterms to my professor to get re-graded?
  • drthipp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6i'm a chemist and i've seen lots of structures with bridging hydrides. i don't think this is about a new mode of bonding, its about "doping" metal oxides. plus there's no citation. wait until this gets in a real journal before you get too excited.
  • Ascus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12This is the type of article Digg is great for. Something like will never make nghtly news, yet is more significant than "Is Hillary Going to Run For President?"
    • Buelldozer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5That Digg is great for? Please, well over half the respondents in here don't have a CLUE what the story is about and are asking for explanations or making jokes.
  • geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Just last weekend UCSB researchers discovered that consumption of vast amounts of alcohol can produce extremely flammable gaseous flatulance capable of igniting a candle.
  • sixister, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2They can make this happen but they can't figure out how to make Isla Vista not a raging ***** hole.
    • Mofo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4It's the 7000 SBCC students that cause most of the problems there. The PD has become such Nazis there I don't know what more they can do.
    • sixister, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1You can't try to tell me that FT inhabitants aren't a HUGE part of the problem. 30k people in IV, 7k of which are CC students.

      All we can hope for is that more people drunk-stumble off the cliffs, and DP errodes into the ocean more quickly.
    • alvarobernal, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@sixister

      FT inhabitants are not a HUGE part of the problem. FT has a notorious reputation in the past for being out of control, but I can assure you that FT is on par as far as it being a problem with all the other residence halls, unless you have some sort of evidence that proves it otherwise.

      FT has changed.
    • slickrick2k1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Sixister apparently hasn't heard/seen anything about UCSB in quite a while. Wait, are you that DarkSideofUCSB.com guy? The "IV made my daughter a drunken whore" dude?

      Classic.
    • sixister, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I wouldn't call it evidence. But my own numerous encounters with the happenings inside and outside FT leave me with very little respect for the two buildings' rapport with the law... or common sense.
    • sixister, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1And yes slickrick, I have. I live across the freeway and venture into Isla Vista almost every week.
  • MisssMaya749, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5GO GAUCHOS! (gotta rep ucsb, it doesn't make the front page that often...)
  • nmathew, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I just glanced through the paper, and it's a theory paper. Without experimental results, I fail to see why this warranted publication in Nature.
    • mgrundmann, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0They cite several experimental works and use the theory to explain UID in ZnO. Ya know, gravity and evolution are just theory too.
  • Superc00kie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think it's a bit too early to shout "Eureka!". If it is true it will have a drastic impact on chemistry. Let's wait and see what other scientists have to say about it.
  • al1encas1no, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4gaucho pride... represent. finally, those $260 million they spent on the pretty little building to the east are coming through.
  • adavies42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I love that bit about global warming at the beginning. Totally ***** off-topic. What next, a reference to how Iraq is in a civil war?
  • alvarobernal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm really happy because this adds a little bit more credibility to my undergraduate degree, even though I didn't major in science.
    • slickrick2k1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Seriously. Keepin raking in those nobel prizes and maybe someday people will stop asking me if I got a minor in Beirut. Although I gotta say it's pretty warranted ;)
  • bunni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7God bless the UCSB Chem and Physics Departments - if they keep making breakthroughs and winning nobel prizes I can stop regretting not going to UCLA.
    • afbase, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4no worries. UCSB rocks!! go los gauchos (or however it's spelled)

      Does anybody know if we won that soccer tournament in St. louis?
    • itsxtian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yep, we won! Division 1 NCAA Men's Soccer 1st Place.

      There's videos of fellow gauchos celebrating and throwing the goal post over DP too... haha
  • robert82a, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I just finished reading the article. It is excellent work, but some people here are overestimating its importance. They use existing, and well understood, density functional theory methods to characterize a previously unreported stable electronic configuration about a hydrogen center. This result appears to explain some interesting spectroscopic results for MgO and ZnO materials, but doesn't violate any long standing principles of quantum chemistry. We (physical chemists) are already aware of many compounds that violate the "lewis dot structure" picture of the world taught in Gen. Chem classes and have extensive and well understood quantum electronic structure theories to explain them-- DFT, the method used in this paper, is one of them.

    BTW, Density functional theory is similar to a slightly fancier quantum mechanics where the quantity solved for is the electronic density instead of the electronic wave function. So in terms of theoretical physical chemistry it is an interesting application of a modern electronic structure method, but the bigger impact of the article is the possible development of better semiconductive materials using hydrogen in this manner.
    • Xaviermgk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Sorry, wrote right after you, but see mine below (hey, I'm only a master's level non-practicing orgo chemist, but whatever). Question for you though: For someone with rudimentary knowledge of pchem and inorganic chemistry, what is the interaction between the metal and hydride? Are the bonds coordinate covalent or more ionic in nature? I definitely agree about that the semiconductor applications are interesting, but I just wanted to re-emphasize that this is probably limited in scope. Sorry folks, we won't be finding tetravalent, hydrogen-based life forms anytime soon.
    • blanchey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It is a bit misleading to say that DFT "is similar to a slightly fancier quantum mechanics...." True, the idea is that you determine the electron density rather than trying to solve the full many-body wave equation, but it isn't a fancier QM. It is a way of modeling particular kinds of quantum mechanical systems where, as with all such simulations, some approximations are made in order to make it computationally tractable.

      I don't mean to nit-pick, but I I feel it is an important clarification.
  • Xaviermgk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think this is what happens...Hydrogen has generally long been known to exist in metal lattices. Per Wiki,

    "Their bonding nature vastly differs from element to element and changes according to external criteria such as temperature, pressure and electric current. Titanium and coinage metal hydrides are polymeric.

    Other transitional metal hydrides are interstitial in nature. ***In these, molecules of hydrogen dissociate and hydrogen atoms settle in the octahedral or tetrahedral holes in the metal crystal lattice called the interstitial sites. Interstitial hydrides often have non-stoichiometric nature.*** Hydrogen atoms trapped in the lattice can migrate through it, reacting with impurities and worsening the properties of the material. In materials engineering this is known as hydrogen embrittlement."

    Zinc, especially oxides of zinc, are electron-rich, and these compounds probably form by back-bonding of the hydride to the metal. The only difference is that hydrides don't have p orbitals that would allow for pi-backbonding (as with ligand like a cyclopentadienyl anion). Thus, I would guess these hydrides have sigma-backbonding, where the zinc atom tries to "relieve" its electron density by pushing good ole electrons into the anti-bonding s orbital of the hydrogen atom. While I found this pretty interesting, I don't think that it's going to change chemistry that much, because it seems to be specific for metal oxides with no other ligands. Hell, I'm just surprised that no one found these earlier, just because how simple the complexes are.
  • jmrex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Nature Article:

    http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nmat1795.html

    its $18 though.
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