Surface Studies of Some Hydrogen Storage Materials

XPS, XAES and AES techniques have been applied to study the surface properties of certain hydrogen storage intermetallic compounds, namely, LaNi5, CaNi5, Mg2Ni, Mg2Cu and FeTi. From these studies, it has been derived that the binary alloys undergo surface decomposition and subsequent oxidation upon exposure to air, resulting in a variety of oxygen containing species of the component elements. In addition, the surface compositions differ considerably for the various systems presented in this investigation, mainly because of their different segregation behaviours. © by R. Oldenbourg Verlag, München 1989