Insulator-metal transition of fluid molecular hydrogen

Dynamically compressed fluid hydrogen shows evidence for metallization at the relatively low pressure of 140 GPa (1.4 Mbar) while experiments on solid hydrogen made in a diamond-anvil cell have failed to detect any evidence for gap closure up to a pressure of 230 GPa (2.3 Mbar). Two possible mechanisms for metalliclike resistivity are put forward. The first is that as a consequence of the large thermal disorder in the fluid (kT similar to 0.2-0.3 eV) short-range molecular interactions lead to band tailing that extends the band edge into the gap, resulting in closure at a lower pressure than in the solid. The second mechanism argues that molecular dissociation creates H atoms that behave similar to n-type donors in a heavily doped semiconductor and undergo a nonmetal-metal Mott-type transition.