{"id":14401,"date":"2025-09-11T13:21:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T13:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/14401\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T13:21:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T13:21:07","slug":"chemists-create-next-gen-rocket-fuel-compound-that-packs-150-more-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/14401\/","title":{"rendered":"Chemists Create Next-Gen Rocket Fuel Compound That Packs 150% More Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"The<\/a>The Yeung Lab\u2019s arc melter synthesizes manganese diboride. Credit: Brian Busher<\/p>\n

UAlbany chemists created manganese diboride, a high-energy material with potential for rocket fuel and new technologies.<\/p>\n

Chemists at the University at Albany have developed a high-energy compound that could transform rocket fuel and make space travel more efficient. When ignited, this compound produces significantly more energy per unit of weight and volume than current propellants.<\/p>\n

For rockets, this means that less fuel would be needed to achieve the same mission duration or payload capacity, leaving more space for essential equipment and supplies. The research was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn rocket ships, space is at a premium,\u201d said Assistant Professor of Chemistry Michael Yeung, whose lab led the work. \u201cEvery inch must be packed efficiently, and everything onboard needs to be as light as possible. Creating more efficient fuel using our new compound would mean less space is needed for fuel storage, freeing up room for equipment, including instruments used for research. On the return voyage, this could mean more space is available to bring samples home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Joseph<\/a>UAbany PhD student Joseph Doane prepares the arc melter to synthesize manganese diboride. Credit: Brian Busher<\/p>\n

The compound, manganese diboride (MnB2), is more than 20% higher in energy density by weight and about 150% higher by volume compared with aluminum, which is currently used in solid rocket boosters. Despite its potency, it is remarkably stable and only ignites when exposed to an ignition source such as kerosene.<\/p>\n

Beyond rocket propulsion, the boron-based structure of MnB2 shows wide-ranging potential. Work from the Yeung lab indicates it could also strengthen catalytic converters in automobiles and act as a catalyst for breaking down plastics.<\/p>\n

It Takes Heat to Make Heat<\/p>\n

Manganese diboride is part of a group of chemical compounds long suspected to have unusual properties, but progress in studying them has been limited by the challenge of actually producing the material.<\/p>\n

\u201cDiborides first started getting attention in the 1960s,\u201d said UAlbany PhD student Joseph Doane, who works with Yeung. \u201cSince these initial looks, new technologies are allowing us to actually synthesize chemical compounds that were once only hypothesized to exist.<\/p>\n

\"Molecular<\/a>Molecular model of manganese diboride. Credit: Brian Busher<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing what we do about the elements on the periodic table, we suspected that manganese diboride would be structurally asymmetrical and unstable \u2014 factors which together would make it highly energetic \u2014 but until recently, we couldn\u2019t test it because it couldn\u2019t be made. Successfully synthesizing pure manganese diboride is an exciting achievement in and of itself. And now, we can test it experimentally and discover new ways to put it to use.\u201d<\/p>\n

Producing manganese diboride requires extreme heat, generated by a device known as an \u201carc melter.\u201d To begin, manganese and boron powders are pressed into a pellet and sealed inside a reinforced glass chamber. A narrow electrical current is then directed at the pellet, heating it to nearly 3,000\u00b0C (over 5,000\u00b0F). The molten substance is rapidly cooled to preserve its structure. On the atomic scale, this process forces the central manganese atom to bond with more atoms than usual, creating a crowded arrangement tightly compressed like a coiled spring.<\/p>\n

Unlocking the structure through deformation<\/p>\n

When exploring new chemical compounds, being able to physically produce the compound is critical. You also need to be able to define its molecular structure in order to better understand why it behaves the way it does.<\/p>\n

UAlbany PhD student Gregory John, who works with computational chemist Alan Chen, built computer models to visualize manganese diboride\u2019s molecular structure. These models revealed something critical: a subtle skew, known as \u201cdeformation,\u201d which gives the compound its high potential energy.<\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/a>Assistant Professor Michael Yeung. Credit: Brian Busher<\/p>\n

\u201cOur model of the manganese diboride compound looks like a cross-section of an ice cream sandwich, where the outer cookies are made of a lattice structure comprised of interlocking hexagons,\u201d said John. \u201cWhen you look closely, you can see that the hexagons aren\u2019t perfectly symmetrical; they\u2019re all a little skewed. This is what we call \u2018deformation.\u2019 By measuring the degree of deformation, we can use that measure as a proxy to determine the amount of energy stored in the material. That skew is where the energy is stored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another way to picture it.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine a flat trampoline; there\u2019s no energy there when it\u2019s flat,\u201d said Yeung. \u201cIf I put a gigantic weight in the center of the trampoline, it will stretch. That stretch represents energy being stored by the trampoline, which it will release when the object is removed. When our compound ignites, it\u2019s like removing the weight from the trampoline and the energy is released.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Materials Need New Compounds<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this consensus among chemists that boron-based compounds should have unusual properties that make them behave unlike any other existing compounds,\u201d said Associate Professor of Chemistry Alan Chen. \u201cThere\u2019s an ongoing quest to figure out what those properties and behaviors are. This sort of pursuit is at the heart of materials chemistry, where creating harder, stronger more extreme materials requires forging brand-new chemicals. This is what the Yeung lab is doing \u2014 with findings that could improve rocket fuel, catalytic converters and even processes for recycling plastics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis study is also a great example of the scientific process, where researchers pursue interesting chemical properties even when they\u2019re not certain what specific applications might emerge. Sometimes, present case included, the results are serendipitous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/a>Michael Yeung\u2019s lab in UAlbany\u2019s ETEC Building. Credit: Brian Busher<\/p>\n

Yeung\u2019s interest in boron compounds started when he was a grad student at the University of California, Los Angeles. His project aimed to discover compounds harder than diamond.<\/p>\n

\u201cI distinctly remember the first time I made a compound related to manganese diboride,\u201d Yeung said. \u201cThere I was, holding this new material that was supposed to be super hard. Instead, it started to get hot and changed into a pretty orange color. I thought, \u2018Why is it orange? Why is it glowing? It shouldn\u2019t be glowing!\u2019 That\u2019s when I realized how energetic boron compounds can be. I put a pin in it to explore in the future, and that\u2019s exactly what we are working on now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reference: \u201cViolations of Coordination: Exploring Metastable Diborides via Energetic Transition Metals\u201d by Joseph T. Doane, Gregory M. John, Alma Kolakji, Abraham A. Rosenberg, Yiren Zhang, Alan A. Chen and Michael T. Yeung, 2 May 2025, Journal of the American Chemical Society.
DOI: 10.1021\/jacs.5c04066<\/a><\/p>\n

Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Yeung Lab\u2019s arc melter synthesizes manganese diboride. Credit: Brian Busher UAlbany chemists created manganese diboride, a high-energy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1153,9658,61,60,1436,9772,82,1337],"class_list":{"0":"post-14401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-sustainability","9":"tag-fuel","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-materials-science","13":"tag-rocket","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-space-exploration"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}