Hydride plus proton (H- + p+)?

Kobayashi et al in the March 18, 2016 Science (AAAS) p. 1314-1317: "Pure H- conduction in oxyhydride". The article reports first conclusive evidence of conductors of H minus. The hydride conductor reported here consists of a di-lanthanum / lithium superoxide/hydroxide, ie. La2LiHO3, with electrodes consisting of La2LiHO3 with titanium (TiH2) as hydride donor and again La2LiHO3 with Ti as the hydride acceptor.

The article and its abstract remind us that a variety of proton (H+) conducting oxides are known. It also reminds that hydrides of alkaline earth metals such as BaH2 can also act as hydride conductors, but lack stability.

Thought experiment: Consider the junction of a hydride conductor directly adjoining a proton conductor. That metal/oxide union under some modest applied electrostatic potential might result in what interaction at said junction?

Longview

@rakitsa

First, I would recommend reading the Science article cited. Conduction of protons occupies whole books (eg. "Proton Conductors - solids, membranes and gels -- material and devices." edited by Phillippe Columban, vol. 2 of series "Chemistry of Solid State Materials" Cambridge U. Press, 1992). Hydride conductions is another field somewhat tangential to proton conduction. The play of hydrides and protons in LENR theories is long and complex. The most notable for me are the ideas of "shielding" coulombic repulsion afforded by an intervening electron, so that conceivably, and by "hand waving", one may see fusion enabled in this way.

Arguing that protons are directly involved is always difficult (unless one accepts the Lipinski - UGC WIPO application dataset!). Mainly because proton (or deuteron rich) electrolytic environments are often LESS likely to produce over unity COP, or any evident energy at all. But, shielded protons, or deuterons, for example as hydroxyls (deuteroxyls) often show up in electrolytic LENR / CF experiments with over unity or at least promising results.

One complexity when speaking of "conduction" is that there are two distinct types, in my reading anyway. One is what I call "handoff" conduction, that is some component of the conducting material is able to shuttle hydride ions by taking on two redox states, essentially one with and one without the hydride. A hydride is simply handed off along such a shuttle in the whatever direct electrostatic potential pushes it. True "vacuum" conduction may be another matter for hydrides, since they are relatively bulky, that is over a thousand times the diameter of a naked proton. Direct, that is non-handoff conduction is seen in some systems for proton conduction. It is difficult to easily appreciate the immense strength of charge surrounding a naked proton, that is all of the charge of an electron, but occupying far less than one millionth the volume (the field strength there will be truly immense, and is one reason why proton / proton fusion are collisionally so immensely difficult, in my humble opinion). There are immense surprises in proton chemistry and behavior, even for chemists, who have been working at the bench with protons for over 150 years (not by that name of course).

The conduction of hydride ions in this case is surely "handoff" type. But that does not mean that a naked hydride is not presented at positive face of such a hydride conductor. The conjunction of such with a naked proton at least provides a thought provoking question and possible model for aspects of LENR. It is a question that can at least be approached at the bench, in my opinion.

Thanks for your interest!

Longview

@rakitsa

Yes, if they were direct conduction. But of course electrons themselves are generally thought to be conducted, at least in the non-superconductive state, by "handoff" processes. Clearly hydride ions could be launched in a vacuum. But you are quite right that the crystal would likely be too crowded for direct conduction of hydride ions. I suspect a hydride ion may be considerably smaller than an electron, even though most, if not all anionic radii are larger than their uncharged parent atoms. By the way, most, if not all, cations are considerably smaller than their uncharged parent atoms.

@rakitsa

An electron at some extreme linear velocity might be considered "small" as in very high voltage electron microscopy, for one application. An electron fixed in some position has quite a large and indeterminate cross-section, the "electron cloud". This is Heisenberg and earlier deBroglie as lambda = h/mv = h/p. Look at electronic orbitals and compare them with nuclear particle orbitals. Here is one manifestation of the thousand-fold or greater difference.

Speaking broadly, an electron has a tiny mass, but generally not a tiny diameter.

@Thomas Clarke
Sounds reasonable. Do we know what the hydride ion looks like in the context of its conductor, and on a positive interface? I suspect it may not be so clear as the Schrodinger solution in vacuo.

Quote from rakitsa

I think, H- conductivity is nonsense.

I guess you will have to speak to the editors of Science about that (best to read the cited article, before making summary executions) . In spite of its pre-eminence in scientific publications, Science editors certainly have made mistakes before, and some of them likely relate to premature editorial judgements of CF / LENR. But that is not what we're discussing.

You have not made any case whatsoever that hydride conductivity is "nonsense". I suggest you return to read my posts carefully, take a day to consider the evidence and the ideas there. Then make your case. I'm willing to respond to reasoned critiques. And you will note that I am not advocating anything particularly unusual here. See my response to Thomas Clarke, for example.

Quote from rakitsa

Please do not mix the size of an electon itself and the size of an electron cloud in a bound state.

An ion is not necessarily a "bound state", although I would agree with you that an anion such as a hydride might be considered such.

The hydride ion in transit in such a conductor may be ionically bound or at least is sequentially bound in the "handoff" mechanism aforementioned. Whether it is bound or not is likely not related to the supernumerary electron's size (mean three standard deviation volume in this context, or possibly maximum, excursive length-- see more below). Keep in mind as well that this ionic bonding would likely have a completely distinct electronic size effect compared to say covalent bonding. Repeating: hydride conduction appears to involve aspects of sequential ionic bonding.

On your other "point": I can only accept that there are various views of the question of the size of an electron. The "classical" diameter is around 5.6 fm, that is over 6X that of the classical proton diameter of 0.877 fm (so my 1000X number is quite wrong by that classical standard-- although I can cite a reference to support it). But this "classical" 5.6 fm electronic dimension is also quite inappropriate. Free electrons, such as those in an electron beam have effective diameters that can be best described as I mentioned earlier, that is for example by their wavelength "lambda" i.e. planck's constant (h) divided by the momentum. Hence their non-relativistic wavelength is inversely proportional to the momentum.... it is the essence of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle although Heisenberg himself apparently did not care for deBroglie's nifty equation and refers to it as "merely empirical". The proton, having a rest mass 1836 times that of an electron, has a much less velocity dependent wavelength, that is 1836 times less. Hence the proton diameter is much more like a "hard ball", and indeed its classical radius is a more realistically defined as about one femtometer / one fermi.

To see what someone else says of electron size, see this Googler Dan Piponi's comment at Quora (and "upvoted" by some other physicists there):

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-diameter-of-an-electron:

The notion of an electron radius or diameter
makes sense for a particle that is a hard ball. But today we don't model
electrons in that way and it doesn't really make sense to talk of a
radius. In Quantum mechanics an electron is described by a wave. There's nothing you can point to and call the radius.

If the wave is bunched up in one particular place then you might talk of
the radius of the bunch. But that's not a fixed property of the
electron. An electron in an atom is bunched up in a region the size of
an atom, but an electron conducting electricity in a piece of metal is
described by a very extended wave. So it wouldn't make sense to call
this the electron radius.

If an electron were made of smaller
parts we could define the radius using the average distance between the
parts, or something similar. But as far as we know an electron is a
fundamental particle with no smaller parts.

There are some things
associated to an electron that are like a radius. For example, if you
fire particles at an electron and watch how they scatter you can compute
what's called a Cross section (physics)
which is a bit like the area of the target the electron makes. You
could compute a radius from this, but it depends on what exactly you
fire at the electron so it's not a fixed number.

Longview continues: I should say my 1000 X diameter IS a rough approximation of a typical orbital number. While it is NOT necessarily in a "bound" state to get to such a diameter. Scattering experiments can yield these magnitudes of diameters for electrons in free atoms.

You are correct that electrons are ostensibly fundamental and have no known constituent components. However, that does not necessarily imply that they are infinitesimal points. But certainly you are correct that there are arguments to support that idea.... If I recall correctly, that is one implication of Hotson's revival of Dirac's original conception, subsequently abandoned by Dirac due to dogma of the day. (See D.L. Hotson, Infinite Energy "Dirac's Equation and the Sea of Negative Energy" pt. 1, issue 43 pp. 43-62 and pt. 2, issue 44 pp. 14-37, both issues in 2002).

Quote from Longview

Kobayashi et al in the March 18, 2016 Science (AAAS) p. 1314-1317: "Pure H- conduction in oxyhydride". The article reports first conclusive evidence of conductors of H minus. The hydride conductor reported here consists of a di-lanthanum / lithium superoxide/hydroxide, ie. La2LiHO3, with electrodes consisting of La2LiHO3 with titanium (TiH2) as hydride donor and again La2LiHO3 with Ti as the hydride acceptor.

The article and its abstract remind us that a variety of proton (H+) conducting oxides are known. It also reminds that hydrides of alkaline earth metals such as BaH2 can also act as hydride conductors, but lack stability.

Thought experiment: Consider the junction of a hydride conductor directly adjoining a proton conductor. That metal/oxide union under some modest applied electrostatic potential might result in what interaction at said junction?

Elsewhere Robert E. Godes of Brillouin has drawn attention to hydride conduction. In this link the Institute for Molecular Science draws attention to the Kobayashi article I cited above. Perhaps that third party review will help those befuddled by hydride conduction.....

http://www.ecnmag.com/news/2016/03/hydride-ion-conduction-makes-its-first-appearance?et_cid=5205151&et_rid=207568521&location=top&et_cid=5205151&et_rid=207568521&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.ecnmag.com%2fnews%2f2016%2f03%2fhydride-ion-conduction-makes-its-first-appearance%3fet_cid%3d5205151%26et_rid%3d%%subscriberid%%%26location%3dtop