Hydrogen can become a clever way to store renewable energy and power fuel cells—but this introduces the problem of what can store this hydrogen, in turn. Metal hydrides—solids that absorb hydrogen into their crystal structures—are promising candidates to safely hold large amounts of hydrogen and release it when needed.
However, many materials that release hydrogen at convenient pressures do not store enough hydrogen by weight to be useful. Where do researchers begin searching for a solution with such a restrictive trade-off?
A Tohoku University-led research team has now created a clearer map for that search. By combining DigHyd, a curated database of hydrogen-storage measurements collected from the scientific literature, with GoodRegressor, a symbolic regression tool that searches for human-readable equations, the team identified the main physical factors that control the performance of interstitial metal hydrides.
This research turns a large body of scattered experimental data into an interpretable design map for hydrogen storage materials, which helps with the development of safe and efficient green energy storage.
The research is published in Chemical Science.
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