Interaction of Hydrogen Impurity With Nanocrystalline Palladium and Nickel

Abstract

The interaction of hydrogen atoms with nanocrystalline palladium and nickel in the work was studied by the molecular dynamics method. The nanocrystalline structure of palladium and nickel was created in the model by crystallization from the liquid state at the presence of several specially introduced crystalline embryos. After solidification, the calculation blocks, in addition to the crystalline phase, contained grain boundaries and triple junctions of grain boundaries. The interactions of metal atoms with each other were described by the multi-particle Cleri-Rosato potential constructed in the framework of the tight-binding model. Morse potentials were used to describe the interactions of hydrogen atoms with metal atoms and with each other. The parameters of Morse potentials were calculated from the experimental data of theabsorption energy, the activation energy of the above-barrier diffusion of hydrogen in a metal (at normal and high temperatures), the binding energy with a vacancy, dilatation. According to the results obtained in the present work, at a high concentration of hydrogen (the concentration of 10% from the metal atoms was considered), the hydrogen atoms combine into aggregates, which are formed predominantly near the surface of the metal. The aggregates contained, as a rule, several dozen hydrogen atoms and had low diffusion activity. The binding energy of hydrogen atoms with these aggregates was greater than with the metal crystal lattice or grain boundaries in it. In palladium, hydrogen aggregates were formed farther from the surface than in nickel. Apparently, this is due not so much to the relatively low energy of hydrogen absorption by palladium (–0.1 eV) in comparison with nickel (0.16 eV), but rather to the difference in lattice parameters of the metals under consideration: 3.89 Å for Pd and 3.524 Å for Ni. For the same reason, conspicuously, hydrogen aggregates in a pure crystal lattice were more often observed in Pd than in Ni. In Ni, aggregates, as a rule, were formed in defect areas containing an excess free volume: near the free surface, in grain boundaries and in triple junctions.