Developing methods to efficiently store hydrogen will improve its viability as an alternative energy source. Formate salts store and release hydrogen in the presence of palladium-based catalysts. Alloyed nanoparticles formed through pulsed lasers are promising catalysts for facilitating this process, as they exhibit excellent performance and stability and are easy to synthesize. However, no research has been done on using these nanoparticle alloys for formate-based hydrogen storage . This work uses ultrafast laser pulses to generate palladium-based alloy nanoparticles on carbon-based supports. Carbon supports are prepared and coated using ammine-based metal salt complexes. These ammine complexes leverage electrostatic adhesion to carbon-based supports rather than van der Waal forces, which leads to a stronger interaction between the salt and support that facilitates nanoparticle formation. The coated supports are then pulsed using a 1064 nm laser to form nanoparticles. These nanoparticles are characterized using electron microscopy and inductively coupled plasma – optical emission spectroscopy. Through this work, we found that palladium nickel alloys generate more hydrogen when compared to other binary palladium alloys. In addition, we found that PdNi alloys generate hydrogen for over 10 hours, which is better than other reported values in the literature. Future work will allow us to synthesize high-entropy alloys containing more than 4 elements and allow us to determine the most optimal nanoparticle composition to facilitate the use of formate as a hydrogen energy carrier.
