A novel carbon-induced-porosity mechanism for improved cycling stability of magnesium hydride

MgH2 has been extensively studied as one of the most ideal solid hydrogen storage materials. Nevertheless, rapid capacity decay and sluggish hydrogen storage kinetics hamper its practical application. Herein, a Ni/C nano-catalyst doped MgH2 (MgH2Ni/C) shows an improved hydrogen absorption kinetics with largely reduced activation energy. Particularly, the MgH2Ni/C displays remarkable cycling stability, which maintains a high capacity of 6.01 wt% (98.8 % of initial capacity) even after 50 full hydrogen ab/desorption cycles, while the undoped MgH2 counterpart retains only 85.2 % of its initial capacity. Detailed microstructure characterizations clearly reveal that particle sintering/growth accounts primarily for the deterioration of cycling performance of undoped MgH2. By comparison, MgH2Ni/C can maintain a stable particle size with a growing porous structure during long-term cycling, which effectively increases the specific surface of the particles. A novel carbon-induced-porosity stabilization mechanism is proposed, which can stabilize the proportion of rapid hydrogen absorption process, thus dominating the excellent cycling performance of MgH2Ni/C. This study provides new insights into the cycling stability mechanism of carbon-containing Mg-based hydrogen storage materials, thus promoting their practical applications.