First principles study of pressure induced structural phase transition in hydrogen storage material—MgH2

First principles calculation were performed using Vienna ab-initio simulation package within the frame work of density functional theory (DFT) to understand the electronic properties of magnesium hydride. At normal pressure, the most stable structure of MgH₂ is rutile type with a wide band gap of 3.52 eV, which agrees well with the available data. A pressure induced semi-conductor to metallic transition at a pressure of 92.54 GPa is predicted. Our results indicate a sequence of pressure induced structural phase transition in MgH₂. The obtained sequence of phase transition was α→γ→β→δ→ε at a pressure of 0.37 GPa, 3.89 GPa,7.23 GPa and 11.26 GPa, respectively. Thus our results indicate that MgH₂ is one of the best hydrogen storage material and the maximum storage capacity achieved was 7.7%.