The Role of Ti as a Catalyst for the Dissociation of Hydrogen on a Mg(0001) Surface

In this paper, the dissociative chemisorption of hydrogen on both pure and Ti-incorporated Mg(0001) surfaces
are studied by ab initio density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The calculated dissociation barrier of
hydrogen molecule on a pure Mg(0001) surface (1.05 eV) is in good agreement with comparable theoretical
studies. For the Ti-incorporated Mg(0001) surface, the activated barrier decreases to 0.103 eV due to the
strong interaction between the molecular orbital of hydrogen and the d metal state of Ti. This could explain
the experimentally observed improvement in absorption kinetics of hydrogen when transition metals have
been introduced into the magnesium materials.