Abstract
Crystallographic imperfections significantly alter material properties and their response to external stimuli, including solute-induced phase transformations. Despite recent progress in imaging defects using electron and X-ray techniques, in situ three-dimensional imaging of defect dynamics remains challenging. Here, we use Bragg coherent diffractive imaging to image defects during the hydriding phase transformation of palladium nanocrystals. During constant-pressure experiments we observe that the phase transformation begins after dislocation nucleation close to the phase boundary in particles larger than 300 nm. The three-dimensional phase morphology suggests that the hydrogen-rich phase is more similar to a spherical cap on the hydrogen-poor phase than to the core–shell model commonly assumed. We substantiate this using three-dimensional phase field modelling, demonstrating how phase morphology affects the critical size for dislocation nucleation. Our results reveal how particle size and phase morphology affects transformations in the PdH system.
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Acknowledgements
This research (X-ray imaging experiment) used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. Design of the hydriding phase transformation experiment and image analysis was supported by the DOE Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering. We thank the staff at the Advanced Photon Source for their support.
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A.U. and E.M. designed the experiment. M.J.W. performed the phase field simulations. A.U., G.B.S. and M.J.H. performed the ensemble experiments. A.U., W.C., Y.L., E.M. and J.W.K. performed the BCDI measurement. Y.L. synthesized the Pd nanoparticles. All authors interpreted the results and contributed to writing the manuscript.
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Ulvestad, A., Welland, M., Cha, W. et al. Three-dimensional imaging of dislocation dynamics during the hydriding phase transformation. Nature Mater 16, 565–571 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4842
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4842
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