We report the first UV-vis spectroscopic study of bromine molecules confined in clathrate hydrate cages. Bromine in its natural hydrate occupies 51262 and 51263 lattice cavities. Bromine also can be encapsulated into the larger 51264 cages of a type II hydrate formed mainly from tetrahydrofuran or dichloromethane and water. The visible spectra of the enclathrated halogen molecule retain the spe...

We describe our efforts toward the preparation of materials built with molecules possessing topologies analogous to those of macroscopic compasses and gyroscopes. Samples of 1,4-bis(3,3,3-triphenylpropynyl)benzene (3) were prepared by a simple two-step procedure from triphenylmethyl chloride (1) and 1,4-diiodobenzene. The structure of compound 3 is such that the central phenylene can play the r...

Ice and ice clathrate are not only omnipresent across polar regions of Earth or under terrestrial oceans but also ubiquitous in the solar system such as on comets, asteroids, or icy moons of the giant planets. Depending on the surrounding environment (temperature and pressure), ice alone exhibits an exceptionally rich and complicated phase diagram with 17 known crystalline polymorphs. Water mol...

Ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) results on a krypton-water liquid solution are presented and compared to recent XAFS results for the radial hydration structure for a Kr atom in liquid water solution. Though these AIMD calculations have important limitations of scale, the comparisons with the liquid solution results are satisfactory and significantly different from the radial distributions e...

We investigate the role of rattling guest atoms on the lattice thermal conductivity of a type-I clathrate Ba_{8}Ga_{16}Ge_{30} by first-principles lattice dynamics. Comparing phonon properties of filled and empty clathrates, we show that rattlers cause tenfold reductions in the relaxation time of phonons by increasing the phonon-phonon scattering probability. Contrary to the resonant scattering...

The crystal engineering design of new clathrate hosts that employ intermolecular attractive forces much weaker than hydrogen bonding and coordination complexation remains problematic. One approach has been to prepare a series of V-shaped molecules with C2symmetry, a small degree of conformational freedom, and protruding halogen atoms. This design has been highly successful (95%), but little pre...

In contrast to the rich knowledge of water and 17 experimentally confirmed crystalline phases of solid water under positive pressures, water under negative pressure has been poorly explored. In this study, a new crystalline phase of ice with ultralow density (0.6 g cm-3), named "clathrate ice sL", is constructed by nano water cage clusters, and it is predicted to be stable under a lower negativ...

Clathrate materials have been the subject of intense interest and research for thermoelectric application. Nevertheless, from the very large number of conceivable clathrate structures, only a small fraction of them have been examined. Since the thermal conductivity of clathrates is inherently small due to their large unit cell size and open-framework structure, the current research on clathrate...