EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Much of the current hydrogen infrastructure is made of metallic materials that could be susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement or other changes in their mechanical behaviour. To investigate the reason for these changes, the structure of the materials must be understood at a near-atomic scale, which is possible with atom probe tomography. The current problem with measuring hydrogen in materials via atom probe tomography is that due to existing instrumentation, ambient hydrogen from the stainless steel ultra-high vacuum chambers interfere with imaging and quantification of hydrogen in the sample. To avoid this problem, tips are electrochemically loaded with deuterium prior to performing atom probe tomography. To investigate the hydrogen content and distribution in important materials without using deuterium, we designed and built a new atom probe, made from titanium where this problem is avoided. With this instrument, it is now possible to image hydrogen content and distribution without the need to use deuterium as tracer element, thus enabling experiments where the use of tracers is prohibitive. This includes analysis of in-service mechanical components and components from electrochemical devices. Measurements that will be shown in this talk show a significantly lower hydrogen background compared to measurements with a conventional atom probe revealing the location, amount and distribution of hydrogen in metallic materials.