Month: June 2023

Adding a third partner to a family can lead to a number of new structural arrangements. We observed this in the world of Chemistry that upon adding the noble metal Pt to Sn and Nd a plethora of new compounds form. Hopefully this is a way for selective property tuning of materials.

Read the full study here: The Prolific Ternary System Pt/Sn/Nd: Insertion of Pt into the Structures of Sn/Nd Intermetallics Yields Structural Complexity and Wealth

 

 

The new phase Mg₇Pt₄Ge₄ (≡Mg₈□₁Pt₄Ge₄; □ = vacancy) was prepared for this study. A high content of Mg vacancies results in a violation of the 18-valence electron rule. First principle density functional theory calculations on a hypothetical, vacancy-free “Mg₂PtGe” reveal potential electronic instabilities at E_F in the band structure and significant occupancy of states with an antibonding character resulting from unfavorable Pt–Ge interactions. These antibonding interactions can be eliminated through introduction of Mg defects, which reduce the valence electron count, leaving the antibonding states empty. Mg itself does not participate in these interactions. Instead, the Mg contribution to the overall bonding comes from electron back-donation from the (Pt, Ge) anionic network to Mg cations. These findings may help to understand how the interplay of structural and electronic factors leads to the “hydrogen pump effect” observed in the closely related Mg₃Pt, for which the electronic band structure shows a significant amount of unoccupied bonding states, indicating an electron deficient system.

 

Read more here: Optimization of Chemical Bonding through Defect Formation and Ordering─The Case of Mg₇Pt₄Ge₄