Closeout of Advanced Boron and Metal Loaded High Porosity Carbons.

The Penn State effort explored the development of new high-surface-area materials for hydrogen storage, materials that could offer enhancement in the hydrogen binding energy through a direct chemical modification of the framework in high specific-surface-area platforms. The team chemically substituted boron into the hexagonal sp2 carbon framework, dispersed metal atoms bound to the boro-carbon structure, and generated the theory of novel nanoscale geometries that can enhance storage through chemical frustration, sheet curvature, electron deficiency, large local fields and mixed hybridization states. New boro-carbon materials were synthesized by high temperature plasma, pyrolysis of boron-carbon precursor molecules, and post-synthesis modification of carbons. Hydrogen uptake has been assessed, and several promising leads have been identified, with the requirement to simultaneously optimize total surface area while maintaining the enhanced hydrogen binding energies already demonstrated