Peculiarities of Physics and Chemistry in the Transition Metal Hydrides

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Since the discovery of nuclear reactions in PdDx alloys in 1989, very many experimental data sets have accumulated showing the existence of nuclear reactions in materials composed of lattice nuclei of transition metals and occluded hydrogen isotopes (let us call them the CF materials, for short) resulting in various nuclear products such as transmuted nuclei, tritium, neutrons, and others accompanied by large excess energy at relatively low temperatures up to 1000 C. (Let us call these events as a whole, the cold fusion phenomenon (CFP) for short). The cause of these nuclear reactions in the CFP is likely to be the existence of the interactions between nucleons in the CF material through the nuclear force, i.e., the weak interaction (let us call this interaction the nuclear- force interaction), a recognized part in the nuclear physics. It should be emphasized that our phenomenological approach based on the nuclear-force interaction between lattice nuclei and occluded hydrogen isotopes has been successful in giving qualitative and sometimes semi-quantitative explanations for the events in the CFP. In this paper, we consider the effect of the nuclear-force inter- action revealed in the CFP on physics and chemistry in transition metal hydrides where phenomena such as super-diffusivity, HER (hydrogen electrode deposition), and UPD (underpotential deposition) have long been observed without satisfactory explanation consistent with other characteristics of the materials. It is shown that the fundamental mechanism giving a consistent explanation of CFP seems to be also an essential factor giving rise to the peculiar characteristics observed in transition-metal hydrides even if the necessary condition for CFP is not satisfied.