Scientists have discovered a new subclass of chemical compounds

Employees of the Faculty of Chemistry and the Faculty of Materials Science of Lomonosov Moscow State University, as part of an international collaboration, discovered a new subclass of chemical compounds and found conditions for the effective adjustment of their properties. The research results were published in the Journal of Solid State Chemistry.

During previous studies, scientists discovered a new subclass of compounds with the structure of hydroxyapatite Ca10 (PO4) 6 (OH) 2 – the main mineral constituent of bones and teeth. In compounds of the new subclass, the protons of hydroxyl groups are replaced by ions of 3d-metals, including copper. Some of the compounds are brightly colored, while others exhibit the properties of monomolecular magnets (that is, one molecule can behave like a magnet). This allows them to be used as low-toxic pigments, as well as in molecular electronics and spintronics.

“In the course of this work, we determined in what conditions and how many copper ions can be introduced into the hydroxyapatite channels, and also understood what is important to know for the effective adjustment of the functional properties of such a material,” said one of the authors of the article Pavel Kazin, Doctor of Chemical Sciences , Professor of the Department of Inorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, Moscow State University.

In the course of the work, the scientists carried out a solid-phase synthesis of hydroxyapatite samples in a mixture with an excess of copper oxide, after which they made high-temperature annealing of the samples at different temperatures, partial pressures of oxygen and water vapor for a certain time to achieve phase equilibrium. The authors studied polycrystalline samples using X-ray diffraction techniques. They also refined the crystal structure and determined the amount of copper ions in the channels of the crystal lattice from diffraction data. In conclusion, chemists performed a thermodynamic analysis of the data and plotted sections of phase diagrams.

“We define the further development of the research by the general direction of research of this new subclass of compounds. In particular, we are planning a similar study on the introduction of copper ions into other compounds with the structure of apatite and we propose a detailed study of the magnetic and spectroscopic properties of such materials, “the scientist conclu

ded. Source: indicator.ru