![]() ![]() Crystals are black when they are saturated with oxygen and pink when the oxygen has been released again. The crystalline material changes color when absorbing or releasing oxygen. On the other hand a wine's taste and aroma is changed subtly when we aerate it - but not with too much oxygen! Our bodies cannot function if we do not breathe. ![]() ![]() Lots of substances do this - and the result is not always desirable: Food can go rancid when exposed to oxygen. The fact that a substance can react with oxygen is not surprising. The new material is crystalline, and using x-ray diffraction the researchers have studied the arrangement of atoms inside the material when it was filled with oxygen, and when it was emptied of oxygen. "In the lab, we saw how this material took up oxygen from the air around us", says Christine McKenzie. Now Professor Christine McKenzie and postdoc Jonas Sundberg, Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy at the University of Southern Denmark have synthesized a material that absorb oxygen in large quantities and store it. With these we will have to separate oxygen from hydrogen in order to recombine them in order to get energy. Perhaps one day in the future even sunlight-driven "reversible" fuel cells will be made. But sometimes we need oxygen in higher concentrations for example lung patients must carry heavy oxygen tanks, cars using fuel cells need a regulated oxygen supply. We do fine with the 21 per cent oxygen in the air around us. ![]()
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