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Title: Elastic interactions between hydrogen atoms in metals. I. Lattice forces and displacements

Journal Article · · Phys. Rev. B: Condens. Matter; (United States)

This is the first of a series of papers in which a second-order perturbation theory is derived for the Hamiltonian of a metal hydride. The theory, which is called the fully harmonic lattice approximation, or FHLA, goes beyond the customary harmonic treatment of Horner and Wagner to include second-order terms for the hydrogen-hydrogen and metal-hydrogen potentials. These terms account for the hydrogen-concentration dependences of a metal hydride's volume and elastic constants; their inclusion should result in a better representation of the free-energy and phase-change behavior at high hydrogen concentration. In this paper, the forces between hydrogen atoms and metal atoms are evaluated using the FHLA. Two types of forces result: direct forces, between an isolated hydrogen atom and a metal atom, and indirect forces, which are effective forces between a hydrogen atom and a metal atom caused by the presence of a neighboring hydrogen atom. Both the direct and indirect forces each have two components: a permanent part, which is equivalent to the force exerted by a hydrogen atom on a metal atom in the pure (hydrogen-free) metal lattice, and an induced part, which corrects the permanent part for the effects of the hydrogen atom on the metal-metal couplings. These four forces are evaluated for the hydrogen-niobium system. The indirect forces have one-tenth the magnitude and are of opposite sign to the direct forces. The induced component of the force is approximately one-third the size of the permanent component, and opposite to it in sign. The displacements of the metal atoms surrounding an isolated hydrogen atom or a pair of hydrogen atoms are also evaluated. These are compared with the results of previous harmonic-approximation calculations and of experiments on the hydrogen-niobium system.

Research Organization:
Department of Chemical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544
OSTI ID:
5601895
Journal Information:
Phys. Rev. B: Condens. Matter; (United States), Vol. 33:12
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English