A Question for Physicists

What happens when charged, graphane platelets and light hydrogen pass through a magnetic nickel nanotube?   Wouldn’t they bunch up like elections in a vircator and increase the likelihood of four hydrogens combining to produce helium-3, a proton and 7.7MEV? That is my thought for today on the probable nature of the “secret catalyst” or trigger for cold fusion. If this were the "secret catalyst", it would imply the need to keep the operating temperature below that of the annealing temperature of graphane in the hydrogen atmosphere used in the reactor. 

Hint: We change the sp2 orbitals in graphene platelets to sp3 by adding hydrogen atoms and then add extra electrons to get charged, topological insulators.  The resulting platelets and hydrogen gas travel through the magnetic field inside a nickel nanotube.  How difficult can it be to figure out if the platelets bunch up like the electrons in a vircator and how this increases the likelihood of the reaction? Also, do the self-organizing properties of graphene on hydrogen induce ordered phases in the hydrogen?

My Favorite Paper on Nanoelectronics

Abhishek K. Singh, Evgeni S. Penev and Boris I. Yakobson*




Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Department of Chemistry, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005
ACS Nano, Article ASAP
DOI: 10.1021/nn1006072
Publication Date (Web): May 13, 2010
Copyright © 2010 American Chemical Society
* Address correspondence to biy@rice.edu.

Abstract

Complementary electronic properties and a tendency to form sharp graphene−graphane interfaces open tantalizing possibilities for two-dimensional nanoelectronics. First-principles density functional and tight-binding calculations show that graphane can serve as natural host for graphene quantum dots, clusters of vacancies in the hydrogen sublattice. Their size n, shape, and stability are governed by the aromaticity and interfaces, resulting in formation energies 1/√n eV/atom and preference to hexagonal clusters congruent with lattice hexagons (i.e., with armchair edge). Clusters exhibit large gaps 15/√n eV with size dependence typical for confined Dirac fermions.