Hydride-induced amplification of performance and binding enthalpies in chromium hydrazide gels for Kubas-type hydrogen storage.

Hydrogen is the ideal fuel because it contains the most energy per gram of any chemical substance and forms water as the only byproduct of consumption. However, storage still remains a formidable challenge because of the thermodynamic and kinetic issues encountered when binding hydrogen to a carrier. In this study, we demonstrate how the principal binding sites in a new class of hydrogen storage materials based on the Kubas interaction can be tuned by variation of the coordination sphere about the metal to dramatically increase the binding enthalpies and performance, while also avoiding the shortcomings of hydrides and physisorpion materials, which have dominated most research to date. This was accomplished through hydrogenation of chromium alkyl hydrazide gels, synthesized from bis(trimethylsilylmethyl) chromium and hydrazine, to form materials with low-coordinate Cr hydride centers as the principal H2 binding sites, thus exploiting the fact that metal hydrides form stronger Kubas interactions than the c...