Materials Science
Many layered solids intercalate guest molecules. A famous example is the intercalation of potassium into graphite. Intercalation expands the "van der Waals gap" between sheets, which requires energy. Usually this energy is supplied by charge transfer between the guest and the host solid, i.e., redox. Aside from graphite, well-known intercalation hosts are the layered dichalcogenides such as tantalum disulfide and iron oxychloride. In characteristic manner, intercalation is analyzed by X-ray diffraction, since the spacing between sheets increases, and by electrical conductivity, since charge transfer alters the number of charge carriers.
Read more about this topic: Intercalation (chemistry)
Famous quotes containing the words materials and/or science:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The universe is the externisation of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual, and therefore superficial. The earth, and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)