Structural stability, dihydrogen bonding, and pressure-induced polymorphic transformations in hydrazine borane

Abstract

Hydrazine borane (N₂H₄BH₃) has attracted considerable interest as a promising solid-state hydrogen storage material owing to its high hydrogen content and easy preparation. In this work, pressure-induced phase transitions of N₂H₄BH₃ were investigated using a combination of vibrational spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and density functional theory (DFT) up to 30 GPa. Our results showed that N₂H₄BH₃ exhibits remarkable structural stability in a very broad pressure region up to 15 GPa, and then two phase transitions were identified: the first one is from the ambient-pressure Pbcn phase to a Pbca phase near 15 GPa; the second is from the Pbca phase to a Pccn phase near 25 GPa. As revealed by DFT calculations, the unusual stability of N₂H₄BH₃ and the late phase transformations were attributed to the pressure-mediated evolutions of dihydrogen bonding frameworks, the compressibility and the enthalpies of the high-pressure polymorphs. Our findings provide new insight into the structures and bonding properties of N₂H₄BH₃ that are important for hydrogen storage applications.