LaNi₅ based bulk materials have been broadly investigated owing to its low cost, stability and relatively easy production. However, the hydrogenation and electrochemical properties of LaNi₅ based thin films also warrants in-depth study as thin films have many advantages over bulk materials. Thin films usually have high heat conductivity, and good resistance to hydrogen pulverization and readily use as hydrogen storage electrodes. This paper reports the hydrogen storage behavior of La-Ni-Al thin film fabricated by magnetron sputtering and the surface morphology by scanning electron microscope (SEM) before and after hydrogenation. The hydrogen absorption–desorption properties of the samples were measured by pressure composition isotherms (PCI) at different temperature ranging from 0 to 34 atm. The maximum hydrogen storage absorption capacity was found to becould reach up to 1.6 wt%. In contrary to conventional LaNi₅ based bulk materials, there were two transition plateau observed for the thin film from the PCI curves and the transition plateau was usually at 10 atm which was much higher than the typical 1 atm plateau for bulk materials. The hydrogen storage capacity for the thin film and bulk material was similar at 1.1 wt%. Detail work will be given in the paper.