{"id":98807,"date":"2019-11-19T23:31:31","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T07:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/from-a-cloud-of-cold-and-a-spark-researchers-create-and-stabilize-pure-polymeric-nitrogen-for-the-first-time"},"modified":"2019-11-19T23:31:31","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T07:31:31","slug":"from-a-cloud-of-cold-and-a-spark-researchers-create-and-stabilize-pure-polymeric-nitrogen-for-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/from-a-cloud-of-cold-and-a-spark-researchers-create-and-stabilize-pure-polymeric-nitrogen-for-the-first-time","title":{"rendered":"From a cloud of cold and a spark, researchers create and stabilize pure polymeric nitrogen for the first time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/from-a-cloud-of-cold-and-a-spark-researchers-create-and-stabilize-pure-polymeric-nitrogen-for-the-first-time3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists have long theorized that the energy stored in the atomic bonds of nitrogen could one day be a source of clean energy. But coaxing the nitrogen atoms into linking up has been a daunting task. Researchers at Drexel University\u2019s C&amp;J Nyheim Plasma Institute have finally proven that it\u2019s experimentally possible\u2014with some encouragement from a liquid plasma spark.<\/p>\n<p>Reported in the <i>Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics<\/i>, the production of pure polymeric nitrogen\u2014polynitrogen\u2014is possible by zapping a compound called sodium azide with a jet of plasma in the middle of a super-cooling cloud of liquid nitrogen. The result is six nitrogen atoms bonded together\u2014a compound called ionic, or neutral, nitrogen-six\u2014that is predicted to be an extremely energy-dense material.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPolynitrogen is being explored for use as a \u2018green\u2019 fuel source, for energy storage, or as an explosive,\u201d said Danil Dobrynin, Ph.D., an associated research professor at the Nyheim Institute and lead author of the paper. \u201cVersions of it have been experimentally synthesized\u2014though never in a way that was stable enough to recover to ambient conditions or in pure nitrogen-six form. Our discovery using liquid plasma opens a new avenue for this research that could lead to a stable polynitrogen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have long theorized that the energy stored in the atomic bonds of nitrogen could one day be a source of clean energy. But coaxing the nitrogen atoms into linking up has been a daunting task. Researchers at Drexel University\u2019s C&amp;J Nyheim Plasma Institute have finally proven that it\u2019s experimentally possible\u2014with some encouragement from a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}