Analysis of hydrogen, helium and its isotopes in rare earth. Magnetic behavior

J. L. GERVASONI; S. SEGUI

Siracusa

Simposio; HYPOTHESIS XII HYdrogen POwer THeoretical and Engineering Solutions International Symposium; 2017

Due to growing energy supply problems and the deterioration of theenvironment through the burning of fossil fuels, hydrogen has become aclean energy resource of potential application in the near future. Althoughthe incentive to replace traditional sources of energy by hydrogen hasincreased, more research and development is needed to achieve thepractical application of hydrogen. One of the unresolved problems, and inwhich much emphasis has been placed, is hydrogen storage. Among thepotential materials for the safe storage of hydrogen, rare earth-basedalloys have appropriate characteristics such as high capacity (7.6%)weight and cost, which convert them into materials of interest.Its study is also relevant because of its technological importance inmetallurgy, in alloys theory and in the problems involved with the storageof hydrogen as energy vector. On the other hand, rare earth hydrides, ortheir alloys, have gained new interest from the nanotechnology point ofview because of their likely application in world-class fuel storage designsand its importance to the industry.In this work we will study one of the most important properties ofhydrogen/hellium -rare earth systems (see Fig. 1a and 1b), as is tocharacterize the electron density in these systems, since this amount iscritical to the microscopic interpretation of many of properties [1, 2].The other aspect of interest that will address is treated magneticallyordered systems, in particular phenomena related to the interaction withordered hydrogen (generally for low temperatures and high enoughconcentrations of H (x)) configurations. In the case of rare earths, weexpect to see a very strong response from the magnetic 4f electrons tothe presence of hydrogen, either in chain or octahedral sites.