Beginning in the early 1990's, the study of binary mixtures containing simple molecules under high pressure led to the discovery of a solid van der Waals compound: a weakly bound molecular solid whose cohesion is primarily due to van der Waals forces. The formation of this type of compound, such as He(N2)11 discovered in 1992 in the helium-nitrogen system by Vos et al. [Vos, 1992], is predicted in systems such as those containing nitrogen and methane. The nitrogen-methane binary system is studied at room temperature under high pressure in order to construct the pressure-concentration phase diagram up to 16 GPa. Over 20 mixtures of varying concentration have been studied within a diamond anvil cell through Raman spectroscopy and powder X-ray diffraction using synchrotron radiation. Within the phase diagram, phases exist that resemble the pure species at similar thermodynamic conditions, and additionally, two novel van der Waals compounds are observed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/28777 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Aldous, Catherine |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 159 p. |
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