Clathrate hydrates are nanoporous cristalline materials made of water cages encapsulating foreign (gaseous) guest molecules. The MI2C project aims at developping new clathrate hydrates incorporating mineral defects for mimicking their natural environment (e.g. deep oceans or permafrost on Earth) and at investigating, at a fundamental level, the underlying factors governing the gas selectivity and formations/dissociation mechanisms in such systems. This innovative and challenging project falls in the frame of new fundamental perspectives in fields ranging from physical-chemistry (« small scale » deviations from macroscopic thermodynamics laws) to astrophysics (« realistic » predictive model for the extraterrestrial observations).

 

Project supported by the ANR 2015-2019.