Rewriting The Periodic Table At High Pressure

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The periodic table has been a vital foundational tool for material research since it was first created 150 years ago. Now, Martin Rahm from Chalmers University of Technology presents a new article which adds an entirely new dimension to the table, offering a new set of principles for material research. The article is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The study maps how both the electronegativity and the electron configuration of elements change under pressure. These findings offer materials researchers an entirely new set of tools. Primarily, it means it is now possible to make quick predictions about how certain elements will behave at different pressures, without requiring experimental testing or computationally expensive quantum mechanical calculations.

"Currently, searching for those interesting compounds which appear at high pressure requires a large investment of time and resources, both computationally and experimentally. As a consequence, only a tiny fraction of all possible compounds has been investigated. The work we are presenting can act as a guide to help explain what to look for and which compounds to expect when materials are placed under high pressure," says Martin Rahm, Assistant Professor in Chemistry at Chalmers, who led the study.

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