BITS Faculty Publications

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    Adsorption of hydrogen on single-walled carbon nanotubes with defects
    (Elsevier, 2015-10) Ghosh, Sarbani
    We present molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and density functional theory (DFT) calculations of hydrogen adsorption on single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) with various kinds of defects. The nature of defects, which is characterized here by the number of carbon atoms present in a ring on the surface of nanotube, plays a significant role in determining the hydrogen adsorption capacity of the SWCNT. Nanotubes containing the Stone–Wales defect with 5 and 8-member rings were found to have the largest hydrogen adsorption ability that increases further with the number of rings with such defects. Whereas, the presence of defects with 5, 3-5-8-member rings and the Stone–Wales defect with 5 and 7-member rings decreases the adsorption ability of the defective SWCNT significantly with respect to defect-free nanotubes. Our results indicate that the huge discrepancies in hydrogen storage capacities of SWCNT reported in the literature could be attributed to the nature of defects present in nanotubes. DFT calculations also reveal that the adsorption energy depends not only on the nature and number of defects present on the surface of nanotube but also on the equilibrium structure of rings.
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    Hydrogen storage in Titanium-doped single-walled carbon nanotubes with Stone-Wales defects
    (Elsevier, 2017) Ghosh, Sarbani
    The hydrogen storage capacity of Titanium-doped single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) containing the Stone-Wales 5,8 defects was studied using molecular dynamics simulations. The equilibrium doping sites and their stability were estimated using density functional theory. Although introduction of structural defects and dopant atom decreases the formation and cohesive energies, the drop in these energies is not large enough to hinder the thermodynamic feasibility of formation of these structures. Moreover, we observed that the stability of SWCNTs, where Ti is doped by replacing two carbon atoms is similar to that of the defect-free nanotube. This particular novel configuration (D5) was also obtained by rearranging the bonds in the 5 and 8-member rings of the Stone-Wales defect. Doping Ti on the defective rings has a more significant effect on the adsorption of hydrogen than doping on the regular 6-member rings. The D5 SWCNT showed the highest gravimetric and volumetric storage capacities at a temperature of 298K and a moderate pressure of 140atm. We also compared the performance of the D5 SWCNT with a recently reported Ti-doped porphyrin SWCNT and observed that the storage capacity of the D5 SWCNT was significantly higher at similar conditions. Our results suggest that Ti-doped SWCNTs with the Stone-Wales (5,8) defects show a promising potential to meet the ultimate goal set by the US Department of Energy for hydrogen storage.
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    Hydrogen adsorption in pyridine bridged porphyrin-covalent organic framework
    (Elsevier, 2019) Ghosh, Sarbani
    Covalent organic frameworks (COFs), a class of carbon-based polymeric materials have the potential to be used as hydrogen adsorbent. Three dimensional (3D) COFs, due to their low density and high surface area, although have higher hydrogen adsorption, they have less stability than two dimensional (2D) COFs. Here we studied porphyrin group containing 2D COF, namely H2,P-COF for hydrogen storage using density functional theory (DFT) and grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations and the results were compared with the most common 2D COFs, COF-1 and COF-5. Cylindrical shaped 2D COFs where isolated unit blocks are stacked in multiple layers due to van der Waals interactions between individual layers, increase the effective surface area for hydrogen storage. A further modification has been done by bridging the inter-layer gap by pyridine molecules. Insertion of pyridine increases the separation distance of layers of 2D COFs as well as the free volume. Feasibility of the structure formation and stability of all the structures were checked using DFT study. To ensure the structural stability of bridged COFs after hydrogen loading, alternating layers of COF were bridged. Single, bi, tri and tetra -pyridine molecules were chemically bonded with the existing carbon ring present in between two C2O2B rings to form pyridine bridged H2,P-COFs. Our GCMC results show a significant increase in storage capacity which is mainly due to an increase in the free volume of the material. The highest capacity of 5.1 wt% and 20 g H2/L at 298 K and 100 bar, above the gravimetric DOE goal, has been found at room temperature for tetra-pyridine doped porphyrin COF structure.