Transition-Metal-Ethylene Complexes as High-Capacity Hydrogen-Storage Media

From first-principles calculations, we predict that a single ethylene molecule can form a stable complex with two transition metals (TM) such as Ti. The resulting TM-ethylene complex then absorbs up to ten hydrogen molecules, reaching to gravimetric storage capacity of approximately 14 wt %. Dimerization, polymerizations, and incorporation of the TM-ethylene complexes in nanoporous carbon materials are also discussed. Our results are quite remarkable and open a new approach to high-capacity hydrogen-storage materials discovery.