I'll bet putting this thing together this takes some skill and practice.

[NNadir]

This text below appears in this paper: H. Brands,a N. Chandrasekhar,a H. Hipplera and A.-N. Unterreiner Ultrafast dynamics of excess electrons in molten salts: Part II.† Femtosecond investigations of Na–NaBr and Na–NaI melts Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2005,7, 3963-3969

The sample container consisted of two circular windows of 30 mm diameter (single crystals of sapphire) that are pressed inside a high-temperature refractory steel mount. A thin tantalum wire accomplished the sealing between the sapphire windows. One sapphire plate had a circular groove with a volume of about 1 cm3 , which served as a reservoir for the M– MX mixtures. Two rings of graphite compensated the difference in thermal expansion between the sapphire parts and the stainless steel mount. The required amounts of salt and metal (XNa B 0.003) were carefully weighed and transformed into the sapphire reservoir which was subsequently sealed. The optical cell was then mounted in the high-temperature vacuum recipient where the samples were slowly heated (20 K per hour) to the desired temperatures under vacuum. As can be seen in Fig. 1, pump and probe beams were adjusted such that they overlapped temporally and spatially in the sample at an angle of B51. All pump–probe experiments were repeated twice with freshly prepared samples in order to validate the data...

I'm sure I'd bust the thing.

[dweller]

1. Mine came out ok ...

✌🏻

[rubbersole]

2. Being clueless, what is the outcome of the experiment?

What do you do with bipolarons?

[Get Me Outta Here]

3. I'd give them lithium to moderate the mood swings (nt)

[rubbersole]

5. Funny!

I initially was going to say something like "I divorced mine" re to bipolarons. Snarky smart-ass comments that I constantly post don't always go over well with really intelligent DUers. And there are a lot of them here. Part of the appeal. 🥰

[Get Me Outta Here]

6. Know What You Mean

I think I had my most recent ex in mind when I wrote that (but it could have been any).

[NNadir]

4. The issue has to do with the stability of charges and the "freedom" of electrons.

The paper cited in the OP is a reference in this paper, which I found in my files during an episode of cleaning up old downloads:

N. Chandrasekhar and A.-N. Unterreiner, Time-resolved polaron dynamics in molten solutions of cesium-doped cesium iodide J. Chem. Phys. 127, 184509 (2007). In salts having small ions, like say, lithium fluoride, it is possible to stabilize dipolarons, having two electrons in a molecular ion like F-Li-F -2. In Cs/CsI melts, only one electron can be localized on a polaron, dipolarons do not exist.

Instead there is something called "Drude type electrons" which are not formally attached to any atom, but are "delocalized" - they wander.

This has certain effects on the systems electronic and radiation absorption spectrum from the latter paper:

Ultrafast relaxation dynamics of excess electrons were investigated in cesium-doped cesium iodide melt at various temperatures. It is shown that the excess electrons are predominantly polarons in agreement with earlier conclusions from steady-state absorption studies that with increasing cation size, the tendency of formation of bipolarons decreases. Furthermore, temperature-dependent measurements show that ionic diffusion is an important process which determines the relaxation dynamics of excess electrons in M–MX solutions. The activation energy obtained from the temperature dependent relaxation rates of excess electrons agrees well with those calculated from ionic self-diffusion coefficients. This is a further confirmation of our earlier conclusions that the activation energy involved in the relaxation process is nothing but the energy required to form a hole. We have further shown that the relaxation rates of excess electrons in alkali-metal-doped alkali halide melts serve to estimate the size of polarons. Finally, the nature of the relaxation dynamics of polarons is shown to be independent of the excitation region within the stationary absorption spectrum of excess electrons. This is in contrast to the observations of hydrated electrons in aqueous solutions and adds further support to the thermodynamic defect model proposed to explain the electrical and optical properties of excess electrons in molten alkali-metal-doped alkali halide mixtures.

This system arises in nuclear fuels and substances that can be isolated from used nuclear fuels, and I have been very interested in convincing my son that the properties of this system merit serious consideration in addressing certain very serious environmental issues that do not currently admit solution.