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Hydrogen Embrittlement

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Hydrogen is the lightest and one of the most abundant elements. Hydrogen is emerging as a globally important energy source and energy carrier, but storage and transportation remain challenging. Hydrogen can lead to catastrophic failures of materials through a process called hydrogen embrittlement. This is a crucial safety issue for nuclear, automotive, aerospace, construction and chemical industries. Although hydrogen embrittlement has been known for many decades, the underlying mechanisms are still under debate, largely due to the difficulty in precisely mapping the distribution of hydrogen with high fidelity and the inability for computational approaches to accurately capture all the complexities of real-world experimental studies. In the last decade, there has been substantial progress in in situ and in operando high spatial resolution 3D characterization techniques ranging from cryogenic atom probe tomography, advanced transmission electron microscopy, in situ environmental transmission electron microscopy, secondary ion mass spectrometry, thermal desorption spectroscopy, in situ synchrotron X-Ray tomography, in situ high energy X-ray, neutron diffraction methods and other novel methods that provide insight into the effect of hydrogen on deformation mechanisms from the atomic to macroscale. In parallel, there has been also extensive progress in computational approaches targeted toward understanding the influence of hydrogen on deformation mechanisms from atomic scale density functional theory, mesoscale molecular dynamics, Monte Carlo methods, and phase-field simulation to continuum scale finite element modeling. This renaissance in both experimental and computational research hass accelerated mechanistic understanding and providing guidelines to discover materials with high resistance to degradation mechanisms. This special issue on hydrogen embrittlement seeks to develop a collection of reviews and original research articles that summarize cutting-edge developments in understanding hydrogen embrittlement mechanisms of materials both experimentally and computationally.

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Quantitative data on hydrogen distribution in an iron alloy can help researchers develop a more accurate picture of hydrogen movement within materials and better understand hydrogen embrittlement mechanisms.

Editors

Arun Devaraj, PhD, Physical and Computational Sciences Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA
Arun Devaraj is the Chief Materials Scientist in the Physical and Computational Sciences Directorate of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. His research focus is on establishing atomic scale mechanisms for both material processing-microstructure-property relationships and material degradation mechanisms in extreme environments for metallic alloys, oxides, and composite materials. He has extensive experience in applying atom probe tomography (APT) for material characterization, in addition to correlative scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, focused ion beam, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray absorption near edge spectroscopy, scanning transmission X-ray microscopy and in-situ high energy X-ray diffraction at beamlines in various U.S. Department of Energy synchrotron facilities. 
 

Wendy Gu, PhD, Stanford University, USA
Wendy Gu is the Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering of Stanford University. Her research focus is the mechanical behavior of nanomaterials. She researches the unique properties of nanoscale metals, ceramics and nano-architected composites in order to design strong, tough and lightweight structural materials, materials for extreme environments, and mechanically-actuated sensors. Her lab's experimental tools include nanoindentation, electron microscopy, and colloidal synthesis.



Milos B. Djukic, PhD, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Professor Milos B. Djukic is a specialist in hydrogen embrittlement, materials and corrosion science, and the mechanical behavior of materials. He is a Head of the Hydrogen-Materials Interactions Laboratory at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, a Member of the team for preparation of the Hydrogen Strategy of the Republic of Serbia, and an Executive Committee Member of the ESIS (European Structural Integrity Society). The most important contribution of Dr. Djukic's scientific studies consists of research insights in the field of fundamental understanding of hydrogen embrittlement phenomena in metallic materials.