Role of lithium vacancies in accelerating the dehydrogenation kinetics on a LiBH4(010) surface:: An ab initio study

In this work, ab initio density functional calculations were performed to explore the effect of surface lithium vacancies on the initial dehydrogenation kinetics of lithium borohydride. We found that some B-H bonds in neighboring BH4-1 complexes around the vacancy became elongated (weakened). The activation barriers for the recombination of H atoms to form H-2 were decreased from 3.64 eV for the stoichiometrically complete LiBH4(010) surface to 1.53 and 0.23 eV in the presence of mono- and di-vacancies, respectively. Our results indicate that the creation of Li vacancies may play a critical role in accelerating the dehydrogenation kinetics of LiBH4.