High-pressure study of lithium amidoborane using Raman spectroscopy and insight into dihydrogen bonding absence

One of the major obstacles to the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier is the lack of proper hydrogen storage material. Lithium amidoborane has attracted significant attention as hydrogen storage material. It releases similar to 10.9 wt% hydrogen, which is beyond the Department of Energy target, at remarkably low temperature (similar to 90 degrees C) without borazine emission. It is essential to study the bonding behavior of this potential material to improve its dehydrogenation behavior further and also to make rehydrogenation possible. We have studied the high-pressure behavior of lithium amidoborane in a diamond anvil cell using in situ Raman spectroscopy. We have discovered that there is no dihydrogen bonding in this material, as the N-H stretching modes do not show redshift with pressure. The absence of the dihydrogen bonding in this material is an interesting phenomenon, as the dihydrogen bonding is the dominant bonding feature in its parent compound ammonia borane. This observation may provide guidance to the improvement of the hydrogen storage properties of this potential material and to design new material for hydrogen storage application. Also two phase transitions were found at high pressure at 3.9 and 12.7 GPa, which are characterized by sequential changes of Raman modes.