Hydrogen Adsorption of Carbon Nanocone Arrays: Influences of Cone Arrangements

This paper used molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate influences of cone arrangements (including the cone orientation, arrangement pattern and cone spacing) on hydrogen adsorption of open-tip carbon nanocone (CNC) arrays at temperatures of 100 and 300 K. To consider curvature effects for the cone structure of the CNCs, the curvature-modified Lennard-Jones potential parameters were adopted to describe the interactions between the hydrogen and carbon atoms. It was found that the cone orientation (aligned, opposite, and alternate) does not have obvious influences on hydrogen adsorption of the CNC arrays. The arrangement pattern (square and triangular), however, had significant influences on the hydrogen adsorption. The square-patterned CNC array was noticed to have higher storage weight percentage than the triangular-patterned one. Regarding to the influences of cone spacing, the storage weight percentage grew with the increase of the cone spacing and arrived at a stable value as the cone spacing reached a certain critical value. The influences cone arrangements could be ascribed to repulsive effects, which are evident as cone spacing become narrow.