Final published version
Licence: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Article number | eabb6152 |
---|---|
<mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 11/11/2020 |
<mark>Journal</mark> | Science Advances |
Issue number | 46 |
Volume | 6 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Publication Status | Published |
<mark>Original language</mark> | English |
Hydrogen embrittlement is shown to proceed through a previously unidentified mechanism. Upon ingress to the microstructure, hydrogen promotes the formation of low-energy dislocation nanostructures. These are characterized by cell patterns whose misorientation increases with strain, which concomitantly attracts further hydrogen up to a critical amount inducing failure. The appearance of the failure zone resembles the "fish eye"associated to inclusions as stress concentrators, a commonly accepted cause for failure. It is shown that the actual crack initiation is the dislocation nanostructure and its associated strain partitioning.