Influence of Graphite Addition on the Reactivity of Ti Powder with H2 under Ball Milling

Hallmarks of mechanochemistry: from nanoparticles to technology

The aim of this review article on recent developments of mechanochemistry (nowadays established as a part of chemistry) is to provide a comprehensive overview of advances achieved in the field of atomistic processes, phase transformations, simple and multicomponent nanosystems and peculiarities of mechanochemical reactions. Industrial aspects with successful penetration into fields like materials engineering, heterogeneous catalysis and extractive metallurgy are also reviewed. The hallmarks of mechanochemistry include influencing reactivity of solids by the presence of solid-state defects, interphases and relaxation phenomena, enabling processes to take place under non-equilibrium conditions, creating a well-crystallized core of nanoparticles with disordered near-surface shell regions and performing simple dry time-convenient one-step syntheses. Underlying these hallmarks are technological consequences like preparing new nanomaterials with the desired properties or producing these materials in a reproducible way with high yield and under simple and easy operating conditions. The last but not least hallmark is enabling work under environmentally friendly and essentially waste-free conditions (822 references).

Using first principles calculations to identify new destabilized metal hydride reactions for reversible hydrogen storage

Hydrides of period 2 and 3 elements are promising candidates for hydrogen storage, but typically have heats of reaction that are too high to be of use for fuel cell vehicles. Recent experimental work has focused on destabilizing metal hydrides through mixing metal hydrides with other compounds. A very large number of possible destabilized metal hydride reaction schemes exist, but the thermodynamic data required to assess the enthalpies of these reactions are not available in many cases. We have used density functional theory calculations to predict the reaction enthalpies for more than 300 destabilization reactions that have not previously been reported. The large majority of these reactions are predicted not to be useful for reversible hydrogen storage, having calculated reaction enthalpies that are either too high or too low, and hence these reactions need not be investigated experimentally. Our calculations also identify multiple promising reactions that have large enough hydrogen storage capacities to be useful in practical applications and have reaction thermodynamics that appear to be suitable for use in fuel cell vehicles and are therefore promising candidates for experimental work.