Highly Dispersed Surfactant-Free Nickel Nanoparticles and Their Remarkable Catalytic Activity in the Hydrolysis of Ammonia Borane for Hydrogen Generation

摘要

Hydrogen has been considered as one of the best alternative energy carriers to satisfy the increasing demand for a sustainable and clean energy supply.Controlled storage and release of hydrogen are the widely known challenging technologies on the way towards a fuel-cell-based hydrogen economy. Owing to its high hydrogen content, high stability at room temperature, and nontoxicity, the ammonia borane (NH3BH3) complex has been identified as one of the most attractive candidates for chemical hydrogen storage. Catalytic hydrolysis can generate 3 mol of hydrogen per mol of NH3BH3 at room temperature, which presents a high hydrogen capacity up to 9.0 wt of the starting materials (NH3BH3 and H2O), thus making itself an effective approach for the release of hydrogen stored in NH3BH3. So far many catalyst systems have been tested for hydrogen generation from hydrolysis of NH3BH3, among which platinum shows the highest activity.However, concerning the element abundance and related economic issues, it is clearly a desired goal to prepare low-cost catalysts with high catalytic activity for the terminal practical application of this reaction system in the fuel cell.