| Summary: | The kinetics of interstitial hydrogen are of great interest and importance for metal-hydride storage, purification, fusion and fission reactor technology, material failure processes, optical sensors for hydrogen gas and many other technologies. In particular nano-sized materials motivate fascinating applications and scientific questions. If hydrogen is absorbed in vanadium it alters the band structure around the Fermi energy. These modifications of the band structurelead to a change in the absorptance of vanadium which are in first order approximation proportional to the concentration. We present a methodto quantify chemical diffusion of hydrogen in nano-sized materials.The induced changes in the absorptance of vanadium hydride (VHx) thin-films are observed visually and in real-time as a function of position.Concentration profiles and their evolution in time, during chemicaldiffusion, were measured down to a hydrogen content corresponding tojust a few effective monolayers, randomly distributed within VHx. For concentrations reached via phase transitions distinct diffusional behavior was found, where a diffusion-front, a strong concentration gradient, migrates in the direction of the diffusive hydrogen flux. The results show that decreased size strongly influences the energy landscape and reveal different rate limiting steps for absorption and desorption.
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