Hydriding kinetics of ball-milled nanocrystalline MgH2 powders

The kinetics of hydride formation and decomposition described by semiempirical models generally do not involve particle and grain-size dependence. However, ball-milled nanocrystalline powders usually exhibit log-normal grain-size and particle-size distribution. Considering size dependence, a total reacted function for a multiparticle system has been developed. We show that the shape of the measured reaction fraction curves do not determine unambiguously the rate-controlling mechanism of hydrogen sorption, since the kinetics are strongly affected by the microstructure. With the application the convolutional multiple whole profile fitting procedure for nanocrystalline MgH2, the parameters, e.g., the median and variance of the log-normal grain-size distribution have been determined. Taking these values into account, the reaction constants corresponding to different sorption states are considerably modified compared with values obtained from classical single-particle models.