First-principles investigation of solute-hydrogen interaction in a α-Ti solid solution

Abstract

In this paper, a first-principles method is used to calculate the interaction energy between substitutional solute atoms and hydrogen in alpha-Ti. The results show that simple metal (SM) solute atoms are repulsive to H and therefore are detraps for H, whereas transition metal (TM) solute atoms, with smaller sizes than that of the host atoms, attract H and provide traps for H. The relationship between the interaction energy and lattice distortion as well as the electronic structure is investigated. The SM-H and TM-H interactions are dominated by different factors. The repulsive interaction between SM atoms and H is mainly due to the hybridization between the electrons of SM atoms and H when they are close to each other. The interaction between the TM solutes and H is attributable to the atomic size effect, and can be described satisfactorily by Matsumoto's strain field relaxation model. From the solute-H interaction energy and available measured terminal solubility of hydrogen (TSH), the relationship between the solute trapping of hydrogen and TSH in alpha-Ti is discussed. No coherent relationship is found between the theoretical hydrogen trapping effect and the experimental TSH in alpha-Ti alloys.