Apparent kinetics of hydriding and dehydriding of metal nanoparticles

Hydriding and dehydriding kinetics of nanoparticles depend on the particle size. Our calculations illustrate that the apparent (averaged over size) kinetics of an ensemble of particles can be dramatically different compared to those of single particles. Specifically, we analyze the hydriding kinetics, limited by diffusion of hydrogen atoms from the surface layer via the hydride shell to the metallic core, and the dehydriding kinetics limited by associative desorption of hydrogen from the surface layer. In both cases, the apparent kinetics are relatively slow in the later stage, their time scale for the given average size is much larger than that for a single particle of the same size, and some of the special features of the single-particle kinetics (e.g., the initial slowdown of dehydriding) can be partly or completely washed out. The scaling of the time scale of the kinetics with respect to the particle size, however, remains valid. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.