"Hydrogen Storage in Molecular Compounds"

Wendy Mao, Stanford University

Pressure induces profound changes in materials, and new phenomena observed under compression can potentially lead to practical application. For example, the discovery of novel molecular compounds at high pressure in simple hydrogen-containing systems (e.g. H₂-H₂O and H₂-CH₄) opens a new frontier in practical hydrogen storage for mobile applications. The high pressure chemistry of such molecules—even for many of the most basic systems—has been largely unexplored, and studies into their behavior under high pressure has led to exciting and often unexpected discoveries.