Using X-ray science to hit hydrogen storage targets

Using soft X-ray techniques available through Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS), a Sandia team including Mark Allendorf and Farid El Gabaly with collaborators from the Hydrogen Materials Advanced Research Consortium (HyMARC) are probing the chemistry of promising hydrogen storage materials to understand how they absorb and release hydrogen. The research is tackling scientific challenges and technical obstacles that inhibit the use of these materials-based solutions for a range of stationary and transportation uses.

A recent article explores the role the ALS has played and mysteries the team has solved using their findings at the facility. “Using the ALS’s spectroscopy and microscopy tools, HyMARC has upended several established paradigms that have guided hydrogen storage research for decades,” explains Allendorf, a principal investigator and HyMARC’s co-director.

HyMARC is a consortium of five national laboratories: Sandia National Laboratories, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. HyMARC assembles deep national laboratory expertise in hydrogen science, large-scale computational modeling, and state-of-the-art characterization tools to accelerate discovery of solid-state materials for on-board vehicular hydrogen storage.