PNNL

Abstract

The US DOE issued a Grand Challenge for Basic Research Needs for the Hydrogen Economy calling in part for significant new breakthroughs in novel materials and approaches to store hydrogen on-board fuel cell powered vehicles. The Challenge specified several technical criteria for hydrogen storage materials that are necessary to provide sufficient energy density to drive a Fuel Cell powered vehicle >300 miles between refueling. The formation of AB catalyzing the decomposition of NH4BH4 to DADB and hydrogen provides insight into why NH4BH4 appears to be less stable than predicted by electronic structure theory. Further work is planned to investigate the structure of NH4BH4 by neutron diffraction to see if it is possible to induce a phase change at lower temperatures to the zincblende structure predicted to be the most stable structure at 0 K. This work was supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Chemical Sciences Division of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). A portion of the research described in this paper was performed in the W.R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a national scientific user facility sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research and located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated for the DOE by Battelle.