Ab initio modeling of hydrogen pipe diffusion in palladium

Schiavone, Emily

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/99456 Copy

Description

Title

Ab initio modeling of hydrogen pipe diffusion in palladium

Author(s)

Schiavone, Emily

Issue Date

2017-08-21

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Trinkle, Dallas R.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Trinkle, Dallas R.

Committee Member(s)

• Bellon, Pascal
• Heuser, Brent J.
• Schleife, André

Department of Study

Materials Science & Engineerng

Discipline

Materials Science & Engr

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Hydrogen
• Diffusion
• Simulation

Abstract

A hydrogen economy will require metals for separation, transport and/or storage. Therefore, we need to better understand the behavior of hydrogen in metals. Hydrogen in palladium is a model system, for which there exists an abundance of experimental data. Specifically, quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS) experiments, for the first time, directly measured hydrogen pipe diffusion. The diffusivities and energy barriers from ab initio simulations support these findings, but open questions remain, the most concerning of which pertains to the unusual jump distances reported from fitting the experimental data. Instead of comparing diffusivities and energy barriers from simulation with the parameters extracted from fits to the experimental data, we calculate the spherically-averaged incoherent scattering function to directly compare with experimental data. We find that the experimental fitting procedure introduces errors in the extracted diffusivities and jump distances. We also calculate the intermediate scattering function to compare our simulation results with a wider range of experimental data. From direct comparison of the intermediate scattering function, we find disagreement at small times, which is likely due to the contributions from the vibrational motion of the diffusing hydrogen atom, the host palladium atoms and resonate vibrations. This computational approach allows for validation against experiment, along with a more detailed understanding of the QENS results.

Graduation Semester

2017-12

Type of Resource

text

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/99456

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2017 Emily Schiavone

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