I’d personally want to understand that before making any big plans, but this sounds cool.
I’d personally want to understand that before making any big plans, but this sounds cool.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec6413
"Upon treatment with acid, that bond breaks to release more than a megajoule per kilogram of the compound, enough to rapidly boil water from a solution."
That's from the editor's summary (I haven't had time to read the paper).
> When exposed to a trigger -- such as a small amount of heat or a catalyst -- the molecule snaps back into its original form, releasing the stored energy as heat.
From the paper abstract, the catalyst is HCl. I don't have access to the full paper, so I don't know how they separate the HCl from the MOST to neutralize it to be rechargeable again.
The reaction triggered by heat doesn't release all the stored energy, which would be the bigger concern for unintended runaway reactions.
(Note: At high enough temperature the thermal energy will be high enough to go over the energy wall from the high energy isometric to the normal one. So it's plausible. But with high enough temperatures a lot of nasty things can happen, like total decomposition or just burning. So it may not be a good strategy to make a rechargable baterry.)