Cost-effective Mechanochemical Synthesis of Highly Dispersed Supported Transition Metal Catalysts for Hydrogen Storage

Abstract Here, we demonstrate a quasi-solid-state template strategy to synthesis highly dispersed supported metal catalyst on nitrogen-doped carbon (M-N-C) with large fraction of single atom Ni species, in which dispersion of metal precursor, evaporation of solvent and downsizing of templates can be simultaneously achieved during one-step ball-milling process. The incorporation of such nickel based catalyst into MgH2 greatly improved the kinetics with reduced activation energy of 87.2 ± 5.4 kJ mol-1 (156.5 ± 3.2 kJ mol-1 for blank). The versatility of this method is confirmed by the successful synthesis of whole series of 3d transition elements (Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu and Zn) and La, Ce. The kinetic enhancement of their MgH2 integrated composites lie on these elements’ electronegativity which determines the dispersity of metal atoms and the strength of metal-hydrogen interaction.