Metal borohydrides are intensively investigated in the context of energy storage due to their high hydrogen content. 1 Recently, 15 there has also been reported high Li-ion conductivity in several Li-containing borohydrides, such as ortho-LiBH 4 2 and LiCe(BH 4 ) 3 Cl, 3 which makes them interesting as solid electrolytes in Li-ion batteries. Partial substitution of the tetraborohydride anions (BH 4 -) with heavy halides (Cl -, Br -or I -) 20 has been successfully used to alter the properties of borohydrides, e.g. to stabilize the Li-conducting, high-temperature ortho-LiBH 4 phase at room temperature. [4][5][6][7][8] However, the inclusion of heavy halides has only a minor effect on the temperature of hydrogen desorption, 9,10 which must be significantly lowered for alkali-and 25 alkaline earth borohydrides to become viable hydrogen storage materials. For alanates, substitution of hydrogen with fluorine has shown a large effect on the thermal stability, 11 and substitution of F -anions into LiBH 4 has been recently shown theoretically to result in materials with favorable thermodynamics for onboard 30 hydrogen storage applications. 12 Despite the chemical similarity between hydrides and fluorides, there is only one report of confirmed fluorine substitution in borohydrides. 13 An earlier report only presumes the formation of a fluoroborohydride. 14 The present paper reports the results from ball milling of 35 mixtures of KBH 4 and KBF 4 in the molar ratios 3:1 and 1:1 (samples 1 and 2, respectively). The mixtures were milled for 10 hours at ambient temperature. The powder X-ray diffraction (PXD) patterns of the milled products resembled that for pure KBH 4 (CsClO 4 -type structure, space group Fm-3m), but with 40 appreciable shifts in the Bragg peak positions to lower angles, thus indicating expansion of the unit cells. This is consistent with substitution of larger BF 4 -tetrahedra for BH 4 -tetrahedra or larger fluorine atoms for hydrogen. No Bragg peaks for KBF 4 (orthorhombic, BaSO 4 -type structure) were observed.
45The PXD data were analysed using the Rietveld method. The Rietveld fits for 1 and 2 are shown in Figures 1 and 2, respectively. The KBH 4 structure 15 was taken as the starting point. The K and B sublattices together form a NaCl-type structure. The B positions are cubically coordinated by 8 half- Table 1. The unit cell parameters of 1 and 2 were 6.8174(2) Å and 6.9219(9) Å, respectively, compared to 6.7280(8) Å for pure KBH 4 . 15 Thus, the unit cell a axis increases 65 linearly with the amount of fluorine in the sample; this is consistent with the existence of a solid solution. Moreover, the refined compositions of the 3:1 and 1:1 phases are close to the nominal compositions (see Table 1). Refinements with the phase compositions fixed at the nominal compositions gave little or no 70 change in the R-factor (R wp = 4.86% for 1 and unchanged for 2). These findings point towards a complete incorporation of the fluoride into the KBH 4 phase; the nominal compositions are therefore used i...