Hydrogen in metals

Abstract

Research on interstitial alloys of hydrogen with metals began over a hundred years ago, but these systems had remained little more than idle curiosities until World War II. This outlook changed when hydrogen embrittlement became recognized as a serious problem in a large number of technologically important alloys and with the advent of nuclear‐reactor technology, which stimulated interest in solid metal hydrides as moderators. Several studies of the thermodynamics of metal–hydrogen systems and of hydrogen diffusion in these systems followed. The discovery in 1972 that some metal hydrides exhibit superconductivity added further interest.