Electrochemical loading of hydrogen in Mg thin films

The science and technology of hydrogen production from renewable energy, hydrogen sensing and hydrogen storage are central to the realization of a hydrogen-based society, in which me may be living one day. The focus of my Master thesis will be the solid-state hydrogen storage in nanostructured metallic hydrides. In fact, beside the physical storage of hydrogen through pressurized tanks, it is also possible to store hydrogen in the chemical bonds of the metallic hydrides such as MgH2, LaNi5H6,FeTiH2, just to name a few. The problem is to achieve these goals at temperature and pressure as close as possible to ambient conditions. Knowledge-based design of advanced materials can help to solve issues related to unfavourable kinetics and thermodynamics of hydrogen storage. In particular, size effects and interface engineering in nanomaterials are exciting tools to modify and improving hydrogen sorption properties beyond the current state of the art. This is the subject of the present project.