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Magnesium hydride has been studied extensively for applications as a hydrogen storage material owing to the favourable cost and high gravimetric and volumetric hydrogen densities. However, its high enthalpy of decomposition necessitates high working temperatures for hydrogen desorption while the slow rates for some processes such as hydrogen diffusion through the bulk create challenges for large-scale implementation. The present paper reviews fundamentals of the Mg-H system and looks at the recent advances in the optimisation of magnesium hydride as a hydrogen storage material through the use of catalytic additives, incorporation of defects and an understanding of the rate-limiting processes during absorption and desorption.

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Aluminum trihydride (alane) is one of the most promising among the prospective solid hydrogen-storage materials, with a high gravimetric and volumetric density of hydrogen. In the present work, the alane, crystallizing in the gamma-AlH3 polymorphic modification, was synthesized and then structurally characterized by means of synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction. This study revealed that gamma-AlH3 crystallizes with an orthorhombic unit cell (space group Pnnm, a = 5.3806(1) A, b = 7.3555(2) A, c = 5.77509(5) A). The crystal structure of gamma-AlH3 contains two types of AlH6 octahedra as the building blocks. The Al-H bond distances in the structure vary in the range of 1.66-1.79 A. A prominent feature of the crystal structure is the formation of the bifurcated double-bridge bonds, Al-2H-Al, in addition to the normal bridge bonds, Al-H-Al. This former feature has not been previously reported for Al-containing hydrides so far. The geometry of the double-bridge bond shows formation of short Al-Al (2.606 A) and Al-H (1.68-1.70 A) bonds compared to the Al-Al distances in Al metal (2.86 A) and Al-H distances for Al atoms involved in the formation of normal bridge bonds (1.769-1.784 A). The crystal structure of gamma-AlH3 contains large cavities between the AlH6 octahedra. As a consequence, the density is 11% less than for alpha-AlH3.