Chemists create a new generation rocket fuel compound which contains 150% more energy

Ualbany’s chemists have created manganese diboride, a high energy material with rocket fuel potential and new technologies.

Chemists at the University of Albany have developed a high energy compound that could transform fuel from rockets and make space trips more effective. When it is ignited, this compound produces much more energy per unit of weight and volume than current propellants.

For rockets, this means that less fuel would be necessary to reach the same duration of the mission or the same payload capacity, leaving more space for essential equipment and supplies. Research was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

“In the fuse ships, the space is at a higher price,” said assistant chemistry professor Michael Yeung, whose laboratory has carried out the work. “Each thumb should be wrapped effectively, and everything that should be as light as possible. Creating a more effective fuel using our new compound would mean less space for fuel storage, freeing space for equipment, including instruments used for research. On the return trip, it could mean that more space is available to bring samples home. ”

The compound, the manganese diboride (mnb₂), is more than 20% higher in weight density by weight and approximately 150% higher in volume compared to aluminum, which is currently used in solid rockets. Despite its power, it is remarkably stable and ignites only when exposed to a source of ignition such as kerosene.

Beyond the propulsion of the rockets, the Borre of MNB2 boron structures shows a large-scale potential. The work of the Yeung laboratory indicates that it could also strengthen catalytic converters in cars and act as a catalyst to decompose plastics.

It takes heat to make heat

Manganese diboride is part of a group of chemical compounds suspected for a long time to have unusual properties, but progress in studies has been limited by the challenge of actually producing the material.

“Diborids began to draw attention in the 1960s,” said Joseph Doane, a student in the doctoral student of Ualbany, who works with Yeung. “Since these initial looks, new technologies allow us to really synthesize chemical compounds which were formerly only supposed to exist.

“Knowing what we do on the elements of the periodic table, we suspect that manganese diborings would be structurally asymmetrical and unstable – which, together, would make it very energetic – but until recently, we could not test it because it could not be done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkqruvu3us4

The production of manganese diboride requires extreme heat, generated by a device known as “Arc fusion”. To begin with, manganese and boron powders are pressed in a lozenge and sealed inside a reinforced glass room. A narrow electric current is then directed towards the base, the heating at almost 3,000 ° C (more than 5,000 ° F). The fusion substance is quickly cooled to preserve its structure. At the atomic scale, this process forces central manganese atom To bond with more atoms than usual, creating a closely compressed crowded arrangement like a rolled spring.

Unlock the structure by deformation

When exploring new chemical compounds, it is essential to be able to physically produce the compound. You must also be able to define its molecular structure in order to better understand why it behaves as it does.

Ualbany’s doctorate student Gregory John, who works with the computational chemist Alan Chen, built computer models to view the molecular structure of manganese diboride. These models revealed something critical: a subtle bias, known as “deformation”, which gives the compound its high potential election.

“Our model of manganese diboride compound looks like a transverse cut of an ice cream sandwich, where exterior cookies are made of a trellis structme structure composed of nested hexagons,” said John. “When you look closely, you can see that the hexagons are not perfectly symmetrical; They are all a little biased. This is what we call “deformation”. By measuring the degree of deformation, we can use this measurement as a proxy to determine the amount of energy stored in the material.

Here is another way to imagine it.

“Imagine a flat trampoline; there is no energy there when it is flat,” said Yeung. “If I put a gigantic weight in the center of the trampoline, it will stretch. This stretch represents the energy stored by the trampoline, which it will release when the object is removed. When our compound ignites, it is like removing the weight of the trampoline and that the energy will be released.”

New materials need new compounds

“There is this consensus among the chemists according to which the boron -based compounds should have unusual properties which make them behave unlike all the other existing compounds,” said ALAN CHEN CHEMISTER AGRICUGE. “There is a continuous quest to understand what are these properties and behaviors. This type of prosecution is at the heart of the chemistry of materials, where the creation of harder and stronger materials requires forging new chemicals. This is what the Yeung laboratory does – with results that could improve rocket fuel, catalytic converters and even plastics reward processes.

“This study is also an excellent example of the scientific process, where researchers continue interesting chemical properties even when they are not certain which specific applications could emerge. Sometimes the present case included, the results are fortuitous. ”

Yeung’s interest in Boron’s compounds began when he was a graduate student at the University of California in Los Angeles. His project was aimed at discovering compounds harder than Diamond.

“I remember distinctly from the first time I made a compound linked to manganese diboride,” said Yeung. “I was there, holding this new material which was supposed to be super hard. Instead, it started to become hot and changed in a pretty orange color. I thought:” Why is it orange? Why is it shining? He shouldn’t shine! “It was then that I realized how energetic Boron compounds can be.

Reference: “Violations of coordination: Exploration of metastable diborings via energy transition metals” by Joseph T. Doane, Gregory M. John, Alma Kolakji, Abraham A. Rosenberg, Yiren Zhang, Alan A. Chen and Michael T. Yeung, May 2, 2025, Journal of the American Chemical Society.
DOI: 10.1021/jacs. 5C04066

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