Graphene oxide and lithium amidoborane: a new way to bridge chemical and physical approaches for hydrogen storage

Abstract

The incorporation of lithium amidoborane (LiAB) into graphene oxide (GO) and the dehydrogenation process of the GO-LiAB complex have been investigated for combining the chemical and physical hydrogen storage approaches. The obtained adsorption energy and minimum energy pathway (MEP) demonstrate that both of the two dominant groups of -O-and OH-contribute to the facile combination of GO and LiAB (GO 3 -LiAB). The GO 3 -LiAB complex has a better dehydrogenation performance than the pristine LiAB, which also indicates the feasibility of doping Li atoms on the GO surface. Atomic charge and bond length analyses match well with the MEP prediction. By dehydrogenation of the GO 3 -LiAB complex, we also achieve uniform metal doping on the GO surface for physisorption of H 2 . The GO-Li (n) products can store up to 5 wt% H 2 and the GO-(Li 3 N 3 B 3 ) (n) can still store 5 wt% H 2 . The dehydrogenation product of the GO 3 -LiAB complex has bridged the chemical and physical hydrogen storage approaches to move towards on-board hydrogen storage applications, which expands the scope for designing more efficient hydrogen storage materials.

Graphene oxide: A promising nanomaterial for energy and environmental applications

“…The hydroxyl groups on GO surface act as proton donors to react with AB and yield H 3 NBH 2 + cation, which is the key to facilitating AB dehydrogenation (see Figure 6a-c). Using first-principles calculations, Li and co-workers [82] predicted a novel composite by GO and lithium amine borane (LiAB), in which the hydroxyl groups on GO surface may interact with LiAB via one molar equivalent of H 2 released (Figure 6d). Compared to the pure LiAB, GO-LiAB hybrid shows better dehydrogenation performance with reduced reaction barriers.…”

“…The epoxide-enriched GO can be lithiated/delithiated as rechargeable cathode with high capacity and good stability [103,104], in which the hydroxyl groups were identified as the lithiation-active species. More efforts have been devoted to the RGO/TMO hybrid cathodes in LIBs [82,83,[105][106][107][108]. Enwrapping Li 3 V 2 (PO 4 ) 3 on RGO sheets as cathode material can facilitate the charge transfer but concomitant with low initial discharge capacity (177 mA h g À 1 at 0.1 C) [105].…”

Application of GO in Energy Conversion and Storage

“…Recently, Li et al [66] proposed to combine lithium amidoboranes (LiAB) with GO to form a hybrid complex since the hydroxyl groups on the GO surface may interact with LiAB via one molar equivalent of H 2 released. Compared to the pure LiAB, the hybrid GO-LiAB complex shows greater dehydrogenation performance for chemical hydrogen storage, according to their calculations of minimum energy pathway for the dehydrogenation process.…”

“…Since noble metals have limited resource in nature, it is desirable to utilize the alternative non-noble metal composites for catalytic applications [62][63][64][65][66]. Lu et al proposed to use the GO supported Fe-Ni NPs with the auxiliary of polyethyleneimine for effectively suppress the metal aggregation [62].…”

Graphene‐Based Energy Devices

“…Traditionally, activated carbon or carbon black has been used as the support because of their high specific surface area. Owing their open structure, high electric conductivity, and specific surface area, graphene-based materials have drawn much attention to the application of graphene on fuel cells [48][49][50][51][52][53][54]. It has been proved that graphene could replace traditional carbon-based materials as an alternative matrix for catalyst loading.…”