Abstract

Nanostructured materials may be defined as those materials whose structural elements - clusters, crystallites or molecules - have dimensions in the 1 to 100 nm range. The explosion in both academic and industrial interest in these materials over the past decade arises from the remarkable variations in fundamental electrical, optical and magnetic properties that occur as one progresses from an infinitely extended solid to a particle of material consisting of a countable number of atoms. The requirement of an efficient and clean fuel alternative has increased in recent years due to several factors including global warming, health problems and oil prices and is expected to become more pronounced and progressively replace the shore running fossil fuel in future [2]. Hydrogen is considered one of the best alternative fuels due to its abundance, easy synthesis, and non-polluting nature when used in fuel cells. Therefore its use will improve significantly air quality health as well as prevents global warming caused by fossil fuels. Hydrogen have been stored as pressurized gas (high pressure vessels which had risk of explosion) and as liquid using cryogenic vessels (energy of liquefaction, leaks), or an atomic solid. The key challenge is the development of the technology for hydrogen storage. Recent investigation has shown that nanoscale material may offer advantages if certain physical and chemical effects related to the nanoscale can be used efficiently and promise to offer an economical solution to the challenge of safe storage of large hydrogen quantities. The present review focuses on the application of organic (carbon nanostructures, activated carbon), inorganic nanostructures and metal and chemical hydrides for storing hydrogen. Other interesting materials included here are lithium nitride and porous metallo-organic frame work

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