【Frontiers in HaiChuan Chemical Technology】Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics achieves reversible hydrogen storage and release cycles for metal-organic compound materials through photocatalysis

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Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics achieves reversible hydrogenation/dehydrogenation cycles for metal organic compound hydrogen storage materials through photocatalysis. Published on: 2025-04-11. Recently, Researcher Chen Ping and Researcher He Teng from the Hydrogen Energy and Advanced Materials Research Department’s Hydrogenide Energy Chemistry Research Center (Group DNL1901) at our institute, in collaboration with Associate Professor Rao Li from Central China Normal University, made new progress in the research on metal organic compound (MOCs) hydrogen storage materials that had been developed earlier by their team; they succeeded in achieving reversible hydrogenation/dehydrogenation cycles for these materials using photocatalysis. Hydrogen energy boasts advantages such as high energy density, wide availability, and no pollution, making it an ideal secondary energy source. However, the lack of safe and efficient hydrogen storage carriers severely limits the large-scale application of hydrogen energy. Earlier on, the teams led by Chen Ping and He Teng proposed a strategy for using metals to replace the reactive hydrogen atoms in organic compounds, thereby developing new systems of metal-organic compounds for hydrogen storage (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2019) ； Energy Storage Mater., 2020 ； J. Energy Chem., 2025), addressing the challenge of achieving high hydrogen storage capacity and an ideal dehydrogenation enthalpy simultaneously ； And such hydrogen storage materials are applied in the field of solid-state ion conduction (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2023 ； Adv. Funct. Mater., 2024). However, the dehydrogenation of metal-organic compounds requires breaking relatively inert C–H bonds, which presents a high kinetic barrier; therefore, there is an urgent need to develop efficient catalytic processes to enable rapid hydrogen absorption and release under mild conditions. In this work, the team investigated a typical sodium phenolate-sodium cyclohexanol hydrogen storage system for reversible hydrogen storage and release driven by solar energy. Studies have found that under illumination, Rh/TiO2 can catalyze the reversible addition-dehydrogenation of sodium phenolate-sodium cyclohexanolate, with the dehydrogenation rate being nearly two orders of magnitude higher compared to the thermal catalytic process. Furthermore, the team also achieved high conversion and high selectivity in the dehydrogenation of sodium cyclohexanol to sodium phenol under real sunlight. Experimental characterization and theoretical calculation results show that low-frequency light primarily functions to generate heat, providing thermal energy for the reaction, whereas high-frequency light facilitates the desorption of the product sodium phenolate, thereby enabling rapid dehydrogenation of sodium cyclohexanol across the entire spectral range. The relevant research findings were published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition under the title “Solar-Driven Reversible Hydrogen Storage of Sodium Cyclohexanolate/Pheno*de Pair”. The co-first authors of this work are Khai Chen Tan, a doctoral student in the DNL1901 group, and Assistant Researcher Pei Qijun. This work was funded by projects such as the **Key Research and Development Program** and the National Natural Science Foundation.