SUMMARY The works described a study on the preparation of LiBH4 thin films by means of pulsed laser deposition. The results indicated that crystalline LiBH4 films can be prepared from a LiB target under 70 Pa hydrogen atmosphere at ambient temperature. Compared with the former reports of LiBH4, the hydrogen atmosphere and temperature were effectively reduced for the synthetical crystalline LiBH4 films with amorphous Li2B12H12. The mixture was successively dehydrided by two steps in dehydriding reaction, corresponding to the dehydriding amount of approximately 8 and 6 mass%. Compared with the former reports of LiBH4 powder with no catalyzer, the primary dehydriding temperatures of the films was reduced. It will be easy to obtain the hydrogen from LiBH4. This opens up new possibilities to study this important hydrogen storage material. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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ZnO films are grown on c-sapphire substrates by laser molecular beam epitaxy. The band offsets of the ZnO/Al2O3 heterojunction are studied by in situ x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The valence band of Al2O3 is found to be 3.59±0.05 eV below that of ZnO. Together with the resulting conduction band offset of 2.04±0.05 eV, this indicates that a type-I staggered band line exists at the ZnO/Al2O3 heterojunction.

Using first-principles calculations, we predict that a single C2H4 or C5H5 molecule can form a stable complex with two rare earth metals such as La, Eu, and Ho. The La2C2H4 complex then absorbs up to sixteen hydrogen molecules, reaching a gravimetric storage capacity of 9.5wt% by adding a rare-earth metal atom, The results show that Eu-4𝑓 electrons have little impact on the hydrogen adsorption. The nature of bonding between Eu and H2 is due to the hybridization of Eu-5𝑑 with the H-1𝑠 orbital.