Pure water can be used as an insulator.
Yes, water found in nature conducts electricity – but that’s because of the impurities therein, which dissolve into free ions that allow an electric current to flow. Pure water only becomes “metallic” – electronically conductive – at extremely high pressures, beyond our current abilities to produce in a lab.
However, researchers discovered that pure water can be affected by high pressures.
By bringing pure water into contact with an electron-sharing alkali metal – in this case an alloy of sodium and potassium – free-moving charged particles can be added, turning water metallic.
While the conductivity that results is very brief, it’s an important step toward understanding this water phase by studying it in detail.
“You can see the phase change to metallic water with your naked eye!” physicist Robert Seidel from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie in Germany ExplainedLast year, the paper was published.
“The golden glow of the sodium-potassium droplet, silvery in appearance, is quite impressive.”
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Any material can theoretically be made conductive if it is subject to high pressures.
The idea behind this is that if the atoms are squeezed together tight enough, the orbitals for the outer electrons start to overlap. This would allow them to move around. For water, this pressure is around 48 megabars – just under 48 million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure at sea level.
There have been instances when pressures were higher than this. Produced in a laboratory settingThese experiments are not suitable for studying metallic water. Pavel Jungwirth, an organic chemist from the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czechia, led a group of researchers that looked into alkali metals.
These substances are capable of releasing their outer electrons quickly, which can lead to the formation of electron-sharing properties in highly pressurized purewater without the high pressure.
One problem is that alkali metals can react with liquid water to the point of explosion. Below is a really cool video).
You’ll get a kaboom if you drop the metal in water.
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The research team discovered a creative solution to this problem. What if water were added to the metal instead of adding it to water?
The team began by extruding a small amount of sodium-potassium alloy from a nozzle. Next, they added a thin layer of pure water via vapor deposition.
The metal cations and electrons (positively chargedions) were released into the alloy’s water upon contact.
Not only did this give the water a golden shine, it turned the water conductive – just like we should see in metallic pure water at high pressure.
This was confirmed by optical reflection spectroscopy as well as synchrotron-X-ray photoeletron spectroscopy.
The two properties – the golden sheen and the conductive band – occupied two different frequency ranges, which allowed them both to be identified clearly.
The research will allow us to better understand the phase transition here in Earth. It could also enable us to study extreme high-pressure conditions on large planets.
It is believed that liquid metallic hydrogen swirls on the Solar System’s ice-planets Neptune and Uranus. It’s not just a matter of time. JupiterIn which the pressures are high enough to metalize pure water.
It’s exciting to imagine being able replicate the conditions within our Solar System’s planet colossus.
“Our study shows that metallic water can be made on Earth and also characterizes the spectroscopic characteristics associated with its golden metallic luster.” Seidel said.
The research was published by Nature.
This article was published for the first time in July 2021.
