skip to content

Materials Theory Group

 
Iron and helium get friendly under pressure

Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, but as the most noble gas it is extremely chemically inert. It strongly resists forming compounds. Iron is also highly abundant. With its excellent material properties, especially when alloyed with other elements, iron has played a central role in human development. It also forms an important part of planets and other astronomical bodies. The Earth’s core is largely iron. Iron is also expected to be found in the centre of large exoplanets, and white dwarf stars.

 

A recent theoretical study, conducted by researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh, asked - might iron and helium react under some conditions? The surprising answer is yes, and at pressures to be found within the Solar System - in the core of Jupiter and possibly Saturn. By computationally searching through randomly generated compositions and structures, and optimising them to their lowest quantum mechanical enthalpy, compounds of iron and helium were discovered which are much more stable than iron or helium separately. Future models of the planets and stars should treat helium as a compound forming element.

 

Helium-Iron Compounds at Terapascal Pressures

Bartomeu Monserrat, Miguel Martinez-Canales, Richard J. Needs, and Chris J. Pickard

Physical Review Letters, 121, 015301 – Published 3 July 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.015301

Latest news

Fast and easy exploration of crystal properties using machine-learned Ephemeral Data-derived Potentials

12 January 2024

Machine learning is quickly gaining prominence in the field of computational materials science. In the Materials Theory Group, we develop so-called ‘machine learned interatomic potentials’ (MLIPs), which can describe the...

Structure and colour in nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride

19 December 2023

Superconducting materials have a wide range of applications - from efficient power transmission to the advanced electromagnetics used in MRI machines - due to their loss-free conductivity. Current practical superconductors...

Quantum-induced hydrogen hopping in high-temperature superconducting lanthanum polyhydride

14 April 2023

Figure caption : Quantum effects are essential for hydrogen to dynamically explore different configurations. On the left, we see how the hydrogen atoms cover much larger distances at all temperatures when quantum effects are...

Flat water and ice

26 September 2022

Figure Caption : Pentagonal ice – a two-dimensional form of ice predicted to form when water is squeezed between graphene sheets. Water can be found trapped in nanoscale cavities, for example in biological membranes, or in...

Congratulations Ben Shires!

2 August 2022

Ben completed his PhD viva last week, covering his work on SHEAP , and he will soon be Dr Shires. Congratulations! shires.jpg

Quicker Crystals

14 July 2022

First-principles structure prediction has enabled the computational discovery of materials with extreme, or exotic properties. For example, the dense hydrides, which following computational searches have been found to...

New carbonates uncovered

7 January 2022

A study by Joseph Nelson and Chris Pickard of the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge and the AIMR, Tohoku University, uses structure prediction to exhaustively explore the Ti-C-O and Al-C-O ternary systems.