Abstract
Magnesium-based hydrogen storage material (MgH2) has
attracted much attention due to its high hydrogen storage density (7.6
wt%). However, the high hydrogen dissociation enthalpy and slow
hydrogen dissociation rate in bulk Mg hinder its wide application in the
efficient hydrogen storage. In the present work, we study the hydrogen
adsorption and desorption reactions of MgmHn (m = 1-6) nanoclusters
using density functional theory (DFT). From the global search for the
configurations of MgmHn nanoclusters, we found not only stable saturated
MgmHn (n = 2m) nanoclusters, but four hydrogen-enriched MgmHn
(n:m>2:1) nanoclusters, Mg3H7, Mg4H9, Mg5H11, Mg6H13, with
the hydrogen storage density higher than 8.3 wt%. The
electronic-structure calculations indicate that the stability of the
hydrogen-enriched cluster gets relatively higher for larger nanocluster.
The ab initio dynamics simulations shows that all
hydrogen-enriched clusters have very fast hydrogen dissociation rates,
which is promising for the hydrogen dissociation at ambient temperature
and pressure. This work provides insights into the hydrogen storage
mechanism of nano-magnesium materials.