Atomistic Simulation of Hydrogen Diffusion in Palladium Nanoparticles Using a Diffusive Molecular Dynamics Method

Understanding the transport of hydrogen within metals is crucial for the advancement of energy storage and the mitigation of hydrogen embrittlement. Using nanosized palladium particles as a model, recent experimental studies have revealed several highly nonlinear phenomena that occur over a long period of time. The time scale of these phenomena is beyond the capability of established atomistic models. In this work, we present the application of a new model, referred to as diffusive molecular dynamics (DMD), to simulating long-term diffusive mass transport at atomistic length scale. Specifically, we validate the model for the long-term dynamics of a single hydrogen atom on palladium lattice. We show that the DMD result is in satisfactory agreement with the result of the classical random walk model. Then, we apply the DMD model to simulate the absorption of hydrogen by a palladium nanocube with an edge length of 16 nm. We show that the absorption process is dominated by the propagation of a sharp, coherent α/β hydride phase boundary. We also characterize the local lattice deformation near the dynamic phase boundary using the mean positions of the palladium and hydrogen atoms.