Functionalization of hydrogenated silicene with alkali and alkaline earth metals for efficient hydrogen storage

First principles density functional theory has been employed to investigate the electronic structure along with the stability, bonding mechanism, band gap and charge transfer of metal functionalized hydrogenated silicene (SiH), or silicane, in order to envisage the hydrogen storage capacity. Various metal adatoms including Li, Na, K, Be, Mg and Ca have been doped on the most stable chair like configuration of silicane. The corresponding binding energies and charge transfer mechanism have been discussed from the perspective of H2 storage ability. The Li and Na metal adatoms have been found to be ideally suitable not only for their strong metal to substrate binding and uniform distribution over the substrate but also for their high capacity for storage of hydrogen. The stability of both Li and Na functionalized SiH has also been confirmed by MD simulations. It was found that both Li(+) and Na(+) adsorbed four H2 molecules attaining reasonably high storage capacities of 6.30 wt% and 5.40 wt% respectively with average adsorption energies lying within the range suitable for practical H2 storage applications, in contrast with alkaline earth metals.