In situ infrared thermographic screening of compositional spread Mg–Ti thin-film libraries

An infrared imaging set-up and our own data treatment methodology have been developed to investigate hydrogen storage properties of combinatorial metallic thin-film libraries in situ. The technique has been tested by analysing the kinetics of hydrogen sorption and desorption in pure metallic magnesium films and in compositional-spread Mg–Ti libraries. Thermography was used to screen the surface emissivity of the libraries, since hydrogenated and dehydrogenated phases present very different values of this property. The proposed data treatment allows for direct visualisation of onset reaction temperatures (Thydrogenation and Tdehydrogenation) in function of composition which, in the present case, clearly reveals the catalytic influence of titanium on the kinetic properties of magnesium film dehydrogenation.