AMP_06_September_2021

A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1 5 FEEDBACK In a groundbreaking discovery, an international collaboration of 15 scien- tists from 11 research institutions pro- duced an aqueous solution with me- tallic properties and documented the phase transition at BESSY II synchrotron in Berlin. To do this, they experimented AM&P WINS TECHNICAL ARTICLE AWARD Advanced Materials & Processes (AM&P) magazine received some ex- citing feedback from the organizers of the 2021 Tabbie Awards conduct- ed by Trade Association Business Publications International (TABPI). AM&P won the Bronze Award for Technical Article! The winning article, “Historic Monel-Part II: Testing and Analysis of Atmospheric Corrosion Products,” RESEARCH TRACKS/FEEDBACK We welcome all comments and suggestions. Send letters to joanne.miller@asminternational.org. with alkali metals. Although sodium and other alkali metals immediately start to burn in water, the team found a way to keep this violent chemistry in check. Instead of throwing a piece of alkali metal into water, they did it the other way around: They put a tiny bit of water on a drop of alkali metal, a sodi- um-potassium alloy, which is liquid at room temperature. At BESSY II, they set up the experi- ment in the SOL³PES high vacuum sam- ple chamber at the U49/2 beamline. The sample chamber contains a fine nozzle from which the liquid NaK alloy drips. The silver droplet grows for about 10 seconds until it detaches from the nozzle. As the droplet grows, some wa- ter vapor flows into the sample cham- ber and forms an extremely thin skin on the surface of the droplet. This al- most immediately causes the electrons as well as the metal cations to dissolve from the alkali alloy into the water. The METALLIC WATER ON EARTH In the sample chamber, the NaK alloy drips from a nozzle. As the droplet grows, water vapor flows into the chamber and forms a thin skin on the drop’s surface. released electrons in the water behave like free electrons in a conduction band. “You can see the phase transition to metallic water with the naked eye. The silvery sodium-potassium droplet covers itself with a golden glow, which is very impressive,” says scientist Rob- ert Seidel of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, who supervised the experiments. The thin layer of gold-colored me- tallic water remains visible for a few seconds. This enabled the team led by Pavel Jungwirth of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, to prove with spec- troscopic analyses at BESSY II and at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Bio- chemistry in Prague that it is indeed wa- ter in a metallic state. The groups were then able to determine the plasmon frequency and conduction band us- ing optical reflection spectroscopy and synchrotron x-ray photoelectron spec- troscopy. www.helmholtz-berlin.de. appeared in AM&P Nov/Dec 2020 . Ku- dos to the author, James Churchill, and Vicki Burt, who edited the piece. Revisit the winning article: https:// static.asminternational.org/amp/ 202008/24/.