Hydrogen storage materials and performance-conditioning technologies bridging gravimetric capacity, usable performance, and deployment readiness: A review

This review presents a materials-centred yet systems-informed synthesis of hydrogen storage, designed to reconcile intrinsic material properties with real-world performance requirements. The analysis focuses on the principal hydrogen storage classes that directly govern hydrogen retention and release, namely solid-state hydrides, porous adsorbents, chemical hydrogen carriers, cryogenic liquid hydrogen, and compressed gaseous hydrogen systems. Rather than treating storage materials in isolation, the review evaluates how their defining characteristics interact with practical performance-conditioning factors, including storage mechanism, gravimetric and volumetric capacity, operating temperature and pressure, sorption and desorption kinetics, reversibility, cycling durability, thermal-management demand, impurity sensitivity, safety behaviour, and technological maturity. A structured review protocol covering the 2001–2025 literature was used to identify and synthesise studies relevant to these storage classes and their enabling interfaces. The synthesis shows that gravimetric capacity alone is an insufficient basis for ranking hydrogen storage options, because performance-conditioned usability is strongly shaped by enthalpy constraints, heat and mass transfer limitations, activation barriers, structural degradation, catalyst dependence, containment penalties, and application-specific operating conditions. Solid-state hydrides offer high volumetric density and intrinsic containment advantages but remain constrained by kinetic and thermal bottlenecks. Porous adsorbents provide rapid and reversible uptake, although their practical performance remains highly sensitive to pressure, temperature, and binding-energy optimisation. Chemical carriers enable dense and logistics-compatible storage, yet catalytic release penalties, purity constraints, and reaction-energy demands limit direct applicability. Liquid and compressed hydrogen provide benchmark physical storage routes, although boil-off control, compression burden, and containment integrity remain decisive. The review concludes that meaningful comparison across hydrogen storage pathways requires a unified framework that places storage materials at the analytical centre while explicitly accounting for the enabling technological conditions that determine deliverable capacity, durability, safety, and application readiness.