vanadium hydride is a metal compound that absorbs hydrogen and has an incompressible structure under pressure. It has a low density of 6% to 10% less than its metallic counterpart. It is used in the manufacturing of special steel alloys, and may be an important candidate for use in a vanadium redox battery.
Typical compounds include complexes with tetradentate ligands and peroxides, and oxidative brominations. These are typically referred to as “transition” metal hydrides. They are also known as bridging hydrides because they contain a single bond between the hydrogen centre and the transition metal.
A number of compounds containing vanadium have been found, and they range from a few parts per million in minerals to as much as 50000 mg/kg in metals. In the chemical sense, vanadium is considered a rare element.
It was discovered in 1801 by Spanish-Mexican chemist Andres Manuel Del Rio, who initially thought it was lead. It was not until 1830 that French chemist Nils Gabriel Sefstrom was able to generate chlorides of vanadium and discover the true nature of the new element.
Currently, the element is mined in China and Russia from steel smelter slag or as a byproduct of uranium mining. The resulting metal can be used in specialty steel alloys and in some aluminium alloys.
The incompressible behavior of the crystals can be explained by their repulsive interactions among atoms. We have investigated the effects of external pressure on the structural parameters a/a0, b/b0, c/c0 and volume V/V0 for both Fm-3m and Pnma structures at zero, ten and 100 GPa, respectively. The results show that the values a/a0, b/b0, and c/c0 decrease gradually with the increasing pressure. In addition, the corresponding volumes V/V0 are smaller with higher pressures.