Nanoengineered materials can store and release hydrogen at room temperature

June 1, 2026 feature Nanoengineered materials can store and release hydrogen at room temperature Ingrid Fadelli Author Sadie Harley Scientific Editor Robert Egan Associate Editor Energy engineers worldwide are working on various new technologies that could help to limit greenhouse gas emissions on Earth and address climate change. One proposed alternative to polluting fossil fuels, such as petrol, diesel and natural gas, is hydrogen. Hydrogen is a clean fuel that can be used to power fuel cells, devices that directly convert the chemical energy of a fuel into electricity, without burning it. Hydrogen fuel cells could substitute combustion engines and could be particularly advantageous for the development of electric heavy-duty vehicles, such as buses, trucks and even trains. Despite its potential, storing hydrogen safely and reliably has so far proved challenging. One approach to storing hydrogen entails the use of hydrogen carriers, materials that can absorb and release hydrogen. These materials could be used to temporarily store hydrogen and transport it to desired locations. A material that can store remarkably high amounts of hydrogen is lithium borohydride (LiBH4). This material releases hydrogen via a process known as dehydrogenation, which results in the formation of boron and lithium hydride (LiH). For the material to be re-used after it releases hydrogen, boron and LiH need to react with hydrogen gas (H2) via a process known as hydrogenation. Yet boron and LiH are highly resistant to this reaction, which makes hydrogenation difficult to realize without spending copious amounts of energy. Researchers at Zhejiang University, Fudan University and other institutes have recently introduced a new nanoengineering strategy that could reliably prompt hydrogenation at room temperature. Their approach, introduced in a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology, relies on the synthesis of new materials that combine ultrafine LiBH4 nanoparticles and very small clusters of nickel atoms. "LiBH4 is a promising hydrogen carrier owing to its high hydrogen storage capacity," wrote Xin Zhang, Guenglin Xia and their colleagues in their paper. "However, the low reactivity of its dehydrogenation products, boron and LiH, towards dihydrogen molecules makes the re-generation of borohydrides extremely challenging. We theoretically unravel that the dissociation of H2 into H atoms and its adsorption by the active Bspike atoms (surface-protruding boron atoms with low coordination and high reactivity) is a prerequisite for the formation of a B–H bond, rather than the direct reaction between H2 and B." Combining LiBH4 nanoparticles and nickel catalysts As a first step in their research, Zhang, Xia and their colleagues first performed theoretical calculations to better understand how hydrogen reacts with boron at the atomic level. Their calculations led to the identification of highly reactive surface boron atoms, dubbed Bspike atoms, which are essential to the formation of new bonds between boron and hydrogen. The researchers predicted that the size of boron atoms also plays a role in the hydrogenation process. Specifically, they found that ultra-small boron particles would be easier to hydrogenate than larger ones. "The proportion of Bspike atoms increases exponentially as the size of B clusters decreases, indicating that reducing B particle size to the ultrasmall scale is critical for enhancing hydrogenation reactivity," explained the authors. "Thereby, we experimentally synthesize nanocomposites consisting of ultrafine LiBH4 nanoparticles decorated with 3 nm Ni catalytic clusters for hydrogen storage." Nanocomposites are bulk materials that incorporate tiny particles or fibers (typically smaller than 100 nm in size) into the matrix of a standard material. The materials synthesized by the authors consist of ultrafine LiBH4 nanoparticles and nickel clusters that are about 3nm in size. "Upon dehydrogenation, these nanocomposites form B and LiH clusters in close proximity at a 5–10 nm scale, while the Ni clusters remain intact," wrote Zhang, Xia and their colleagues. "The Ni clusters not only facilitate the dissociation of H2 into H atoms but also strongly interact with the B clusters, weakening the B–B bond, which enables the hydrogenation of B/LiH back to LiBH4 at temperatures as low as 30 °C under 100 bar H2." A promising route for the storage of hydrogen Using their newly synthesized nanocomposites, the researchers demonstrated the regeneration of LiBH4 from the interaction of B/LiH with hydrogen gas at temperatures down to 30°C. This is a remarkable achievement, as so far hydrogenation and LiBH4 regeneration required materials to be heated to significantly higher temperatures, which can consume considerable power. The nanoengineering approach proposed by Zhang, Xia and his colleagues could eventually be used to create other promising materials that can reliably store hydrogen at lower temperatures. In the future, this study might thus contribute to the sustainable deployment of hydrogen fuel cells in real-world settings, by enabling the efficient storage of hydrogen and its transport over long distances. Written for you by our author Ingrid Fadelli, edited by Sadie Harley, and fact-checked and reviewed by Robert Egan—this article is the result of careful human work. We rely on readers like you to keep independent science journalism alive. If this reporting matters to you, please consider a donation (especially monthly). You'll get an ad-free account as a thank-you. Publication details Xin Zhang et al, Room-temperature hydrogen storage of boron nanoclusters, Nature Nanotechnology (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-026-02150-z. Journal information: Nature Nanotechnology © 2026 Science X Network