Hydrogen Storage in Diamond Films

Abstract

Field Enhanced Diffusion with Optical Activation (FEDOA), a method developed in the authors' laboratory for adding impurities to diamond, has demonstrated that many types of impurities can be incorporated into natural diamond plates and CVD diamond films. This work reports the incorporation of hydrogen in type IIa diamond plates and CVD diamond films. The results indicate that hydrogen is attracted to diamond. Hydrogen is incorporated into different polycrystalline diamond films at different rates. The grain size of the diamond film seems to play a role in the rate of hydrogen incorporation. The best results for hydrogen storage (21% by mass) were with films with submicrometer grain sizes.