The Structural Chemistry of Hydrogenous Materials

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The most common element in the universe is hydrogen and it is found in numerous compounds of use to mankind. As well as the organic compounds of life, including food and pharmaceuticals many useful inorganic materials and minerals contain hydrogen. Examples include compounds exploited in fuel cells and to store hydrogen. Environmental chemistry aspects include the presence of hydrogen in materials such as clays and metal ores as well as in the corrosion products of many metals e.g. rust. As yet scientists do not have a reliable and easy applied method of finding where the hydrogen atoms are in many of these compounds; the aim of this project is to find and develop such a method. We intend to do this by using a unique probe of the very light hydrogen atom - which is through scattering a beam of neutrons from the material. Normally such neutron scattering is very poor for hydrogen containing compounds but by using very high numbers of neutrons and applying sophisticated methods of collecting and analysing the data we should be able for the first time achieve our goal. Once we have done this we will be able to find where the hydrogen atoms are in many useful materials and this will in term lead to an a better understanding of, and hence improvement in, their properties