Silica Nanosprings - A Novel Nanostructured Material for Hydrogen Storage

Hydrogen storage for transportation remains a major challenge because of the stringent requirements. Current approaches are still far short of achieving published goals, in particular in being able to operate at acceptable and viable temperatures. Physisorption, or non-dissociative approaches, where the hydrogen is stored on a solid substrate have largely focused on carbon-based materials and more recently metal oxide frameworks. However, both approaches suffer from significant drawbacks because of the, low adsorption temperatures and the high pressures required. Silica nanosprings are a novel form of nanostructured glass that have the ability to store and release molecular hydrogen at room temperature. Our results using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy suggest that multilayer adsorption of hydrogen on the nanospring surface may be possible, which is unique to this system certainly, it does not occur with adsorption on carbon nanotubes.