Hydrogen is seen as an increasingly important clean and sustainable energy source going into the future. There are a host of materials being investigated for the storage of hydrogen. In this frontier, we provide an overview of hydride clusters derived from Earth-abundant copper being used for the storage and conversion of hydrides into hydrogen, and the reaction of CO₂ with hydride sources to produce the formic acid/formate pairing, which are considered excellent hydrogen carriers. We summarize the main synthesis methods to stabilize high-nuclearity hydride clusters with phosphine, N-heterocyclic carbene, and in particular phosphor-1,1-dithiolate ligands. Unprecedented structures and hydride geometries have been revealed through both X-ray and neutron single crystal analyses. We point to the release of hydrogen in such hydride clusters through solar irradiation, thermolysis and acid treatments. Finally, we show the facile formation of rhombic nanoparticle copper morphologies derived from accurately determined high-nuclearity clusters and suggest that this could provide a mechanism that links molecular structures with bulk microstructures of materials.

中文翻译：

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氢化铜团簇的储能与转化

氢被视为未来越来越重要的清洁和可持续能源。正在研究大量用于氢存储的材料。在此领域中，我们提供了从地球上丰富的铜衍生的氢化物簇的概述，这些氢化物簇用于氢化物的存储和转化为氢以及CO ₂的反应与氢化物源产生甲酸/甲酸酯对，这被认为是极好的氢载体。我们总结了主要的合成方法，用以稳定具有膦，N-杂环卡宾，尤其是1,1-二硫代磷配体的高核氢化物簇。X射线和中子单晶分析都揭示了前所未有的结构和氢化物几何形状。我们指出通过太阳辐射，热解和酸处理，氢在这些氢化物簇中释放出来。最后，我们显示了从精确确定的高核簇中衍生出的菱形纳米颗粒铜形态的容易形成，并表明这可以提供一种将分子结构与材料的整体微观结构联系起来的机制。