Significantly enhanced hydrogen storage in metal-organic frameworks via spillover

The utilization of hydrogen in fuel-cell powered vehicles is limited by the lack of a safe and effective system for hydrogen storage. At the present time, there is no viable storage technology capable of meeting the DOE targets. Porous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are novel and potential candidates for hydrogen storage. Until now it is still not possible to achieve any significant hydrogen storage capacity in MOFs at ambient temperature. Here, we report, for the first time, significant amounts of hydrogen storage in MOF-5 and IRMOF-8 at ambient temperature by using a very simple technique via hydrogen dissociation and spillover. Thus, hydrogen uptakes for MOF-5 and IRMOF-8 can be enhanced by a factor of 3.3 and 3.1, respectively (to nearly 2 wt % at 10 MPa and 298 K). Furthermore, the isotherms are totally reversible. These findings suggest that our technique is suitable for hydrogen storage in a variety of MOF materials because of their similar structures as MOF-5 and IRMOF-8.