Effect of substituting elements on hydrogen uptake for Pd–Rh–H and Pd–Ag–H systems evaluated by magnetic susceptibility measurement

The magnetic susceptibility and the pressure-composition isotherm were measured simultaneously for Pd–Rh–H and Pd–Ag–H systems in order to clarify the effect of Rh or Ag substitution on the hydrogen uptake from viewpoint of the electronic band structure. The magnetic susceptibility of all Pd binary alloys prepared decreased monotonically with increasing hydrogen content. At high hydrogen contents, the magnetic susceptibility became approximately zero for Pd–Rh–H and Pd–Ag–H system, and the hydrogen content at which the magnetic susceptibility gives zero corresponded with the terminal of the plateau region in the isotherm curve. The results indicated that the magnetic susceptibility of hydride phase was almost zero for all Pd binary alloys. On the basis of the band structure of Pd metal, we concluded that atom substitution only affected shift of the energy at Fermi level, and the amount of the hydrogen uptake was dominated by the number of unoccupied d-band in the alloys.