About this Research Topic
Hydrogen today is enjoying unprecedented state in the world in emerging renewable energy sources. Hydrogen is light, abundant, storable, energy-dense, and produces no direct emissions of pollutants or greenhouse gases. Hydrogen storage and release is a key challenge which is solved by metal hydrides. Lots of important advances have been resulted during the last decade for developing nanostructured materials with high volumetric and gravimetric hydrogen capabilities. There is an urgent need to develop low cost, safe and inexpensive nanostructured hydride materials having high hydrogen content and fast desorbing properties at low temperature and pressure. Many research groups are currently working on hydrogen storage material to get the best absorption/desorption kinetics with ultimate hydrogen contents. Work is needed to improve properties of metal hydrides such as hydrogenation, fast charging/discharging rate, fast kinetics, thermal and cyclic behaviour.
This Research Topic will deal with hydrogen storage in nanomaterial-based hydrides, which are promising storage materials and required to have various properties such as: high hydrogen capacity per unit mass and unit volume (i.e. the amount of available energy); low dissociation temperature with moderate pressure; low heat of formation to minimize the energy necessary for hydrogen release; low heat dissipation during the exothermic hydride formation; reversibility; limited energy loss during charge and discharge of hydrogen; fast kinetics; high stability against O2 and moisture for long cycle life; cyclic ability; low cost of recycling; and charging infrastructures with high safety.
Efforts have been devoted to nanomaterials for hydrogen storage to decrease their desorption temperature, enhanced kinetics, and cycle life. Kinetics has been improved by adding an appropriate catalyst into the materials, as well as by ball milling which introduces defects with improved surface properties. The studies reported promising results, such as improved kinetics and lower desorption temperatures, however, the state of the art materials are still far from meeting the aimed target for their transport applications.
Globally, much research has been undertaken to study nanomaterials for hydrogen storage, however the aim of this Research Topic is to cover promising, recent, and novel research trends in nanostructure based hydrogen storage materials. The following areas to be covered may include, but are not limited to:
• Investigations of nanocomposites materials using various alanates, intermetallics, transition metals, graphene, grapheneoxide, and MXene using various catalysts for hydrogen storage;
• Study of various nanomaterials of alanates, nano carbon, thin films, multilayered films etc. for hydrogen storage;
• Hydrogen storage mechanism in various nanomaterials;
• Investigations of Hydrogen content, kinetics, cycle stability, thermodynamics and enthalpy ;
• Investigations of Hydrogen absorption/desorption by Thermo Gravimetric Analysis, Differential Scanning Calorimeter, and Sievert’s type of equipment;
• Structure of hydrogen nanomaterials by X-Ray Diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscope, Transmission Electron Microscope, X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, and Ultraviolet Photoelectron Spectroscopy etc.
Keywords: Hydrogen Storage, Nanomaterials, absorption/desorption hydrogenation kinetics, Thermodynamics
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
