“…In an attempt to pin down the function, aluminium-titanium alloy phases are under investigation because of the relevance of titanium to the catalytic effect on sodium alanate cycling kinetics [13,26,29]. With the understanding acquired from our proposed mechanism, and from the growing body of reaction and analytical data for NaAlH 4 , we propose the major effect titanium exhibits on cycled sodium alanate kinetics appears to be the alteration of the surface of bulk aluminum, producing titanium-aluminum alloys, specifically TiAl 3 [18,22,26,37,38]. Preliminary calculation results indicate the surfaces of titanium-altered aluminum exhibit increased obtruding electron density, with a developed dipolar characteristic [39,40].…”