Hydrogen as a fuel can be stored safely with high volumetric density in metals. It can, however, also cause embrittlement of metals. Understanding fundamental behavior of hydrogen at atomic scale is key to improve metal – metal hydride systems. However, currently, it is challenging to visualize hydrogen atoms. Here, we present our recent work in which we imaged for the first time hydrogen...
Understanding the behaviour of hydrogen in zirconium-based alloys is desired since these alloys are used for fuel cladding in light water nuclear reactors but are known to suffer from hydrogen pick-up and embrittlement during service, and delayed hydride cracking (DHC) during storage.
Reliably and accurately imaging hydrogen with atom probe tomography (APT) is challenging due to several...
The understanding of Zirconium (Zr) and Hydrogen (H) interactions is a topic of interest in the field of materials science. Zr is known to have a strong affinity with hydrogen, which can lead to the formation of hydrides that can affect the mechanical properties (embrittlement, cracking, etc) of the material [1]. Our studies are carried out on pure Zr analysed by laser-assisted atom probe...
We used APT to investigate Zr-based fuel cladding from boiling water reactor and cold-worked 316L tubes from pressurized water reactor operation.
We carried out voltage pulsing APT on cryo-FIBed Zr cladding (with low success rate); we report on one data set that - contrary to modelling and NanoSIMS experiments - does not show H trapping around an Zr(Fe,Cr)_2-precipitate and discuss how...
