Hydrogen permeation through nickel-plated steels

In order to control the hydrogen embrittlement problems of steels, electrochemical hydrogen permeation experiments and hydrogen microprint technique were performed on nickel plated and electroless nickel (EN) plated steels to evaluate the beneficial effect of the impermeable coating. EN plating which had been annealed at 400 degrees C for 1 h led to a lowest hydrogen permeation rate and effective diffusivity due to its high hydrogen barrier efficiency. The effective diffusivity of the nickel plating and EN plating layers were calculated from permeation data of coated steels. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.