High pressure behavior of ethylene and water: From clathrate hydrate to polymerization in solid ice mixtures

Abstract

Among the ice mixtures that can be found in our Universe, those involving ethylene are poorly studied even though ethylene reportedly exists in the presence of water in several astrochemical domains. Here we report about the chemistry of ethylene and water mixtures in both pressure (0-15 GPa) and temperature (300-370 K) ranges relevant to celestial bodies conditions. The behaviour of the binary mixture has been tracked starting from the ethylene clathrate hydrate and following its evolution through two different crystalline phases up to 2.10 GPa, where it decomposes into a solid mixture of water ice and crystalline ethylene. The pressure and temperature evolution of this mixture has been studied up to the complete transformation of ethylene into polyethylene and compared with that of the pure hydrocarbon, reporting here for the first time its spectroscopic features upon compression. The spectroscopic analysis of the recovered polymers from the ice mixtures provided hints about the reactivity of the monomer under the environmental stress exerted by the water network. The results of this study are expected to be significant in a variety of fields ranging from astrochemistry to material science and also to fundamental chemistry, particularly regarding the study and modelisation of the behaviour of complex mixtures.