Photo-controlled solid-state negative hydrogen ion source

During the past decades, much research was directed toward studying energy storage materials such as palladium. Such materials can store hydrogen like a sponge providing lightweight, high-density hydrogen sources that can be used for vehicles and mobile applications. In this paper, we make use of these lightweight storage materials for designing a solid-state negative hydrogen ion source that can be controlled by light. We propose a metasurface design of GaAs patches on a palladium substrate that releases hydrogen atoms and when excited with light, the electrons tunnel from the GaAs to the H atoms producing negative hydrogen ions. The mechanism of our device is modeled using a transfer matrix approach. This work provides for the first time the possibility of having a photo controlled solid-state negative hydrogen ion source that can impact both accelerator-based ion sources as well as energy storage applications.