Prof. Mario Santoro from National Institute of Optics, Italy, gave a lecture entitled with "Sub-Nano Confined Matter at High Pressures" to ISSP researchers on May 16th.

In his presentation, he talked about a very intriguing research field, joining high pressure science of simple molecular systems to the amazing world of zeolites. He presented results on recently obtained dense sub-nano phases of rare gases and of N₂, O₂, H₂ and H₂O, where these systems tend to form disordered/glassy confined structures and also, in the case of O₂, weak chemical clusters such as O₄. He then presented on several novel compounds obtained by reacting dense simple carbon bearing molecular systems at GPa or tens of GPa, strongly confined in the sub-nanopores of zeolites. The reaction products have remarkable interest for fundamental science, and also for potential applications in mechanics, electronics, photonics and energy storage.

After the lecture, Prof. ZENG Zhi, vice director of Institute of Solid State Physics, expressed her thanks to Prof. Santoro for his visit and hoped to cooperate with each other in the future.