The present study experimentally demonstrated that solid H 2 O is formed through the surface reaction OH + H 2 at 10 K. This is the first experimental evidence of solid H 2 O formation using hydrogen in its molecular form at temperatures as low as 10 K. We further found that H 2 O formation through the reaction OH + H 2 is about one order of magnitude more effective than HDO formation through the reaction OH + D 2 . This significant isotope effect results from differences in the effective mass of each reaction, indicating that the reactions proceed through quantum tunneling.

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Reported here is the first observation of the tunneling surface diffusion of a hydrogen (H) atom on water ice. Photostimulated desorption and resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization methods were used to determine the diffusion rates at 10 K on amorphous solid water and polycrystalline ice. H-atom diffusion on polycrystalline ice was 2 orders of magnitude faster than that of deuterium atoms, indicating the occurrence of tunneling diffusion. Whether diffusion is by tunneling or thermal hopping also depends on the diffusion length of the atoms and the morphology of the surface. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of elementary physicochemical processes of hydrogen on cosmic ice dust.

A new structural phase is discovered for M2CO2 MXenes with M = Sc, Y, La, Lu, Tm, and Ho. The hexagonal carbon layer sandwiched between M atoms, typical for MXenes, is transformed into C3 trimers with anionic electrons localized in quasi zero‐dimensional lattice spaces in‐between the C3 units, so the systems can be described as [M6 C3 O6]+II : 2e− electrides. The systems are readily ionized into [M6 C3 O6]+II with very low ionization energy via an anti‐doping mechanism. It is shown that this new structure of Sc2CO2 can bind multiple lithium atoms, with low migration barriers. The findings indicate that these M2CO2 MXenes with unusual carbon trimers are a new family of 2D electride insulators with the potential for charge storage applications, thermal field emission, and as anode material in lithium batteries.

The compounds Fujikurin A, B, and D, recently isolated from Fusarium fujikuroi , possess intramolecular low-barrier hydrogen bonds (LBHBs), which are hydrogen bonds with a very low-energy barrier for proton transfer. The isolated compounds have a hydrogen-bonded proton that appears to rapidly switch between two equilibrium states via a transition state (TS). To understand the characteristics of these intramolecular LBHBs in detail, we performed path integral molecular dynamics (PIMD) simulations, which can consider nuclear quantum effects (NQEs) under a finite temperature. The PIMD simulations predicted that the NQE completely washed out the energy barrier for the proton transfer reaction. Consequently, a single-well shape emerged in the results, along with the effective free-energy potential surface for the hydrogen-bonded proton distribution. Thus, we conclude that the hydrogen-bonded proton in Fujikurin does not in fact transfer between two equilibrium structures but widely delocalizes around the global minimum structure involving the TS region.