Simple lithium good for many surprises

(PhysOrg.com) -- At first glance, lithium should be a simple atomic system. It is the lightest solid element and with just three electrons, it should exhibit simple, crystalline structures. However, an international team of scientists has shown that under high pressure, lithium “prefers” the liquid state, and that it turns out to be the elemental metal with by far the lowest melting point. At high pressure, lithium also undergoes a series of phase changes into surprisingly complex structures. The results of these experiments performed at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne, and at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, were published Nature Physics.

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