Hydrogen is one of the most prominent energy carriers, which could be used as fuel in the future. Currently, there is no suitable storage technology for mass use of hydrogen as fuel. The purpose of this work was preparation of new HOF materials (metal-hydride-organic frameworks), which could potentially fulfill the requirements for large hydrogen storage. A selection of mechanochemical synthesis products was prepared combining two precursors, a light metal tetrahydridoborate (Li, Mg or Na) and an imidazolate (lithium imidazolate, sodium imidazolate and lithium benzimidazolate). Different products were synthesised using different stoichiometric molar ratios between the two precursors with and without solvent (acetonitrile or ethylacetate). The aim was to synthesize a crystalline product and research the most promising combination of precursors for future work. All the samples were analysed with X-ray powder diffraction, some of them were analysed also with DSC, TG-MS and high temperature X-ray powder diffraction.
The majority of combinations have been found out to be unsuccessful and a large number of samples contained an amorphous phase after having been synthesized. In the majority of cases, the difractograms of samples after synthesis contained peaks of unused precursors. The combination of lithium tetrahydridoborate and lithium benzimidazolate was found to be the most promising as the difractograms of the samples which were synthesized using a higher proportion of lithium tetrahydridoborate contained peaks of a new crystalline phase or phases. With optimization of ball miling programme for the molar ratio 3:1 of these precursors, we tried to understand how the change of ball miling parametres affected the outcome of the synthesis. It was found that the synthesis is more optimal at lower speeds (650 and 750 rpm) and less optimal at a higher number of cycles (especially 12 cycles). The DSC and TG-MS analyses showed that upon heating, hydrogen evolves and leaves the samples which undergo pyrolysis decomposition at temperatures above 300 °C. Two lithium borates were found to crystallize in three of the samples at 500 °C.
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