First-principles study of diffusion and interactions of hydrogen with silicon, phosphorus, and sulfur impurities in nickel

Using density functional theory (DFT), we systematically study the effect of Si, P, and S impurities on the diffusion and binding of an H atom in a face-centered-cubic (FCC) Ni lattice. First, we quantify binding energies of an H atom to a vacancy, an impurity atom, and a vacancy-impurity atom defect pair. The energetics of H interactions show that a vacancy-impurity atom defect pair with larger binding energy traps the H atom more strongly and correlates with electronic bonding. Next, we study how the impurities influence diffusion of an H atom by using the Climbing Image Nudged Elastic band method to evaluate the Minimum Energy Path and the energy barrier for diffusion. The H atom preferentially diffuses between tetrahedral to octahedral (T-O) interstitial positions in pure Ni and when impurities are present. However, the activation energy significantly decreases from 0.95 eV in pure Ni to 0.47 eV, 0.52 eV, and 0.46 eV, respectively, in the presence of Si, P, and S impurities, which speeds up H diffusion. We rationalize this by comparing the bonding character of the saddle point configuration and changes in the electronic structure of Ni for each system. Notably, these analyses correlate the lower values of the activation energies to a local atomic strain in a Ni lattice. Our DFT study also validates the hypothesis of Berkowitz and Kane that P increases the H diffusion and, thereby, significantly increases H embrittlement susceptibility of Ni. We report a similar effect for Si and S impurities in Ni. Published under license by AIP Publishing.