Hydrogen storage in lithium-decorated single vacancy and Stone-Wales
defective silicene: A first-principles investigation
Abstract
Defect engineering and metal decoration onto 2-D materials have gained
major attention as a means of creating viable hydrogen storage
materials. This Density Functional Theory (DFT) based study presents
lithium decorated single vacancy (SV) and Stone-Wales (SW) defective
silicene as a viable media for storing hydrogen via physisorption.
Introducing defects increases the Li adatom’s binding energy from -2.36
eV in pristine silicene to -3.44 eV and -2.73 eV in SV and SW silicene,
respectively, thus preventing Li adatom clustering. The presence of
defects and Li adatom further aid hydrogen adsorption onto the
substrates with binding energies present in the US-DOE set range of -0.2
to -0.7 eV/H 2 with the highest binding energy measured
to be -0.389 eV/H 2. It was seen that both the
Li-decorated defective systems were able to effectively store multiple H
2 molecules up to 28 H 2 with the
highest gravimetric density being 5.97 wt %. The projected density of
state plots indicates a combined overlap of the Li (p) and Li (s)
orbitals with the H (s) orbital leading to enhanced H 2
binding energies. Molecular dynamic simulations conducted at 300 K
confirm the stability of the Li adatom as well as the adsorbed H
2 molecules at room temperature, establishing the
viability of these systems as effective, high gravimetric density,
physisorption-based hydrogen storage media.