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With its middle sheet of silicon sandwiched between magnetic cerium atoms, Posey and her colleagues suspected that CeSiI, first described in a paper in 1998, might have some interesting electronic properties.

This alignment would otherwise require a powerful magnetic field to activate, since cerium fluoride is naturally paramagnetic with randomly oriented spins even at zero temperature.

Inside this reactor, which contains a porous ceramic structure made of cerium oxide, a thermochemical cycle takes place for splitting water and CO2 captured previously from the air.

For the study, the researchers demonstrated the reaction in a lab employing a frequently used cobalt catalyst, conditioned by adding cerium oxide, and then modeled how it worked.

These are typically rich in cerium, used in flat screens, and lanthanides, such as praseodymium and neodymium, which go into magnets.