Amorphous Nickel Nanofilms for Efficient Hydrogen Generation from ammonia borane

Clean and sustainable hydrogen production through liquid hydrogen storage material requires highly active and stable earth-abundant non-noble metal to replace expensive and rare noble metals. Herein, nickel nanofilms (Ni/NiO-NFs) were prepared by the ionic liquid/water interface route. The cationic carbon chain length of the ionic liquid affects the phase composition of the nickel nanofilm, and the ionic liquid with [OMIm][PF6] as the anion has good thermal stability during the synthesis process. The efficiency of Ni/NiO-NFs catalysts was tested by comparative kinetic analysis of the AB hydrolysis for hydrogen production. The as-prepared Ni/NiO-NFs catalyst exhibits excellent hydrogen generation performances, including a hydrogen production rate (2917 ml min-1 gNi-1), and a low activation energy (48.1 kJ/mol). The transition of nickel oxide to metallic nickel and the destruction of the catalyst structure is responsible for the decreased durability. This work highlights the significance of amorphous nanofilms catalysts via the ionic interface method on the regulation of activity for AB hydrolysis. The optimized Ni/NiO-NFs catalyst shows 100% AB dehydrogenation within 5 min, and a rB value of 2917 ml min-1 gNi-1 and a low activation energy 48.1 KJ/mol at 298 K.image