Study of hydrogen adsorption and desorption on boron nitride thin films by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

Kosuwattage, K.; Shimoyama, Iwao   ; Baba, Yuji  ; Sekiguchi, Tetsuhiro  ; Nakagawa, Kazumichi*

B-C-N nanomaterials have attracted attention for hydrogen storage. We investigated adsorption and desorption of hydrogen on hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) and graphite thin films which were chosen as basic systems of the B-C-N nanomaterials using XPS. Epitaxial thin films of h-BN and graphite were deposited on Ni(111) surfaces by CVD method, and were exposed to atomic hydrogen. B 1s and N 1s spectra of h-BN thin films and C 1s spectra of graphite thin films showed peak shifting and peak broadening after hydrogen treatments. We quantitatively compared hydrogenation for h-BN and graphite thin films through peak fitting analysis, and obtained preliminary result that h-BN may have larger degree of hydrogenation larger than graphite. We also studied the hydrogen desorption properties and found that the initiation temperature of desorption for h-BN is similar to the case of graphite. These results suggest that BN-based material can be a potential material for hydrogen storage.