Hydrogen storage in carbon nanotubes: a multi-scale theoretical study

A Combination of quantum and classical calculations has been performed to investigate the hydrogen storage in single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). The ab-initio calculations at the Density Functional level of Theory (DFT) show the nature of hydrogen interaction in selected sites of a (5,5) tube walls. On top of this, Molecular Dynamics simulations model large scale nanotube systems and reproduce the storage capacity under variant temperature conditions. Our results indicate that the interaction of hydrogen with SWNTs is very weak and slightly increase of temperature, causes hydrogen diffusion from the tube walls.