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Published May 20, 2009 | public
Journal Article

The synthesis and hydrogen storage properties of a MgH_2 incorporated carbon aerogel scaffold

Abstract

A new approach to the incorporation of MgH_2 in the nanometer-sized pores of a carbon aerogel scaffold was developed, by infiltrating the aerogel with a solution of dibutylmagnesium (MgBu_2) precursor, and then hydrogenating the incorporated MgBu_2 to MgH_2. The resulting impregnated material showed broad x-ray diffraction peaks of MgH_2. The incorporated MgH_2 was not visible using a transmission electron microscope, which indicated that the incorporated hydride was nanosized and confined in the nanoporous structure of the aerogel. The loading of MgH_2 was determined as 15–17 wt%, of which 75% is reversible over ten cycles. Incorporated MgH_2 had >5 times faster dehydrogenation kinetics than ball-milled activated MgH2, which may be attributed to the particle size of the former being smaller than that of the latter. Cycling tests of the incorporated MgH_2 showed that the dehydrogenation kinetics are unchanged over four cycles. Our results demonstrate that confinement of metal hydride materials in a nanoporous scaffold is an efficient way to avoid aggregation and improve cycling kinetics for hydrogen storage materials.

Additional Information

© Institute of Physics and IOP Publishing Limited 2009. Received 31 October 2008, in final form 2 February 2009. Published 24 April 2009. Print publication: Issue 20 (20 May 2009). We gratefully acknowledge financial support received from the Office of Hydrogen Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technology of the US Department of Energy (DOE contract DE-FC36-05GO15067 for AFG, SLV, PL, and JJV).

Additional details

Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
October 18, 2023