The Structural Chemistry of Hydrogenous Materials

宇宙中最常见的元素是氢，它存在于许多对人类有用的化合物中。除了生命的有机化合物，包括食品和药品，许多有用的无机材料和矿物质都含有氢。例如用于燃料电池和储存氢的化合物。环境化学方面包括氢在粘土和金属矿石等材料中的存在，以及在许多金属的腐蚀产物中，例如铁锈。到目前为止，科学家们还没有一种可靠的、易于应用的方法来发现这些化合物中氢原子的位置；这个项目的目的就是寻找和发展这样一种方法。我们打算通过使用一种独特的非常轻的氢原子探针来做到这一点——这是通过从材料中散射一束中子来实现的。通常情况下，这种中子散射对于含氢化合物来说是很差的，但通过使用大量的中子和应用复杂的收集和分析数据的方法，我们应该能够第一次实现我们的目标。一旦我们做到了这一点，我们将能够找到氢原子在许多有用材料中的位置，这将有助于更好地理解它们的性质，从而改进它们的性质

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