Researchers at the Universities of Bayreuth and Linköping have produced two surprising compounds of nitrogen and the rare earth metal yttrium under very high pressure. The new polynitrides contain ring- and spiral-shaped crystal structures of nitrogen that have never before been observed in experiments or predicted in theoretical calculations. They look similar to widespread structures of carbon compounds. The high-pressure syntheses described in the journal Angewandte Chemie show that the diversity of possible nitrogen compounds and their structures is far greater than the behavior of nitrogen atoms under normal conditions would suggest.
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Source: Phys.org