There are extensive efforts underway worldwide to develop inexpensive and practical hydrogen storage materials for the implementation of a hydrogen-based energy economy. Metal hydrides are leading candidates for hydrogen storage applications because they are solid at room temperature and release hydrogen on demand when heated. HSM systems Inc. has developed a practical hydrogen storage system i...

The sequential treatment of Lewis acids with N,N'-bidentate ligands and thereafter with ButLi has afforded a series of hydride-encapsulating alkali metal polyhedra. While the use of Me3Al in conjunction with Ph(2-C5H4N)NH gives Ph(2-C5H4N)NAlMe2 and this reacts with MeLi in thf to yield the simple 'ate complex Ph(2-C5H4N)NAlMe3Li.thf, the employment of an organolithium substrate capable of beta...

The recent advances on the effects of microstructural refinement and various nano-catalytic additives on the hydrogen storage properties of metal and complex hydrides obtained in the last few years in the allied laboratories at the University of Waterloo (Canada) and Military University of Technology (Warsaw, Poland) are critically reviewed in this paper. The research results indicate that micr...

Methylcyclohexane (MCH)-toluene (TOL) chemical hydride cycles as hydrogen carrier systems are successful with the selective dehydrogenation of MCH to TOL, which has been achieved only using precious Pt-based catalysts. Herein, we report improved selectivity using non-precious metal nickel-based bimetallic catalysts, where the second metal occupies the unselective step sites.

The chemistry of metal hydrides is implicated in a range of catalytic processes at metal centers. Gaining insight into the formation of such sites by protonation and/or electronation is therefore of significant value in fully exploiting the potential of such systems. Here, we show that the muonium radical (Mu. ), used as a low isotopic mass analogue of hydrogen, can be exploited to probe the ea...

Catalytic asymmetric reduction reactions have long been the preserve of the transition metal catalyst. Inspired by the myriad efficient enzyme-catalysed reduction reactions routine in biological systems, chemists have recently begun to design chiral metal-free organocatalysts that employ synthetic dihydropyridine NADH analogues as the hydride source with impressive results. Recent developments ...

A bis-cyclometalated iridium(III) complex with metal-centered chirality catalyzes the enantioselective transfer hydrogenation of ketones with high enantioselectivities at low catalyst loadings down to 0.002 mol%. Importantly, the rate of catalysis and enantioselectivity are markedly improved in the presence of a pyrazole co-ligand. The reaction is proposed to proceed via an iridium-hydride inte...

The hydrogen-alkali metal bond is simple and archetypal, and thus an ideal model for studying the nature of highly polar element-metal bonds. Thus, we have theoretically explored the alkali metal hydride monomers, HM, and (distorted) cubic tetramers, (HM)4, with M = Li, Na, K, and Rb, using density functional theory (DFT) at the BP86/TZ2P level. Our objective is to determine how the structure a...

Photolysis of CpRe(CO)3 in the presence of H3BNEt3 yields the trans-CpRe(CO)2(H)2 complex. This preliminary finding presents a rare example of transition metal mediated dehydrogenation of a tertiary amine-borane and suggests that the abstracted hydrogens may be stored in the form of metal hydride complexes.