Theoretical evaluation of hydrogen storage capacity in pure carbon nanostructures

Carbon nanotubes have been proposed as promising hydrogen storage materials for the automotive industry. By theoretical analyses and total-energy density functional theory calculations, we show that contribution from physisorption in nanotubes, though significant at liquid nitrogen temperature, should be negligible at room temperature; contribution from chemisorption has a theoretical upper limit of 7.7 wt %, but could be difficult to utilize in practice due to slow kinetics. The metallicity of carbon nanotube is lost at full hydrogen coverage, and we find strong covalent C–H bonding that would slow down the H2 recombination kinetics during desorption. When compared to other pure carbon nanostructures, we find no rational reason yet why carbon nanotubes should be superior in either binding energies or adsorption/desorption kinetics.

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