Resistivity Testing of Palladium Dilution Limits in CoPd Alloys for Hydrogen Storage

Palladium satisfies most of the requirements for an effective hydrogen storage material with two major drawbacks: it has a relatively low gravimetric hydrogen density and is prohibitively expensive for large scale applications. Pd-based alloys should be considered as possible alternatives to a pure Pd. The question is how much one can dilute the Pd concentration in a variety of candidate materials while preserving the hydrogen absorption capability. We demonstrate that the resistivity measurements of thin film alloy samples can be used for a qualitative high-throughput screening and study of the hydrogen absorbing properties over the entire range of palladium concentrations. Contrary to palladium-rich alloys where additional hydrogen scattering indicates a degree of hydrogen content, the diluted alloy films respond by a decrease in resistance due to their thickness expansion. Evidence of significant hydrogen absorption was found in thin CoPd films diluted to just 20% of Pd.

Synthesis and Corrosion Resistance of FeMnNiAlC10 Multi-Principal Element Compound

A multi-principal element FeMnNiAlC10 bulk alloy was produced by vacuum arc melting. The same alloy was sintered as a thin film on a silicon substrate by ion beam sputter deposition. The bulk alloy has a multiphase structure the elements predominantly segregating into iron manganese carbides and nickel aluminium phases. The thin film is amorphous without detectable phase segregations. The absence of segregation is attributed to the film composition and deposition onto substrate at temperature below 400 K. The corrosion resistance of the thin film alloy was evaluated in 3.5% NaCl. The FeMnNiAlC10 thin film alloy has better corrosion resistance than 304SS. The hardness of the thin film was approximately 7.2 ± 0.3 GPa and the reduced Young’s modulus was approximately 103 ± 4.6 GPa. FeMnNiAlC10 thin film could be a good candidate for coating oil and gas extraction soft iron infrastructure.

Influence of Thermal Annealing on Structural and Optical Properties of Sb Doped ZnTe Thin Film

Paper presents the influence of thermal treatment on structural and optical characteristics of Sb0.5ZnTe thin film. Alloy of Sb0.5ZnTe has been prepared through traditional and economical melt quenching technique and thin films of prepared alloy was deposited onto glass substrate by thermal evaporation method at pressure of 10–6 Torr. The antimony doped films were annealed for 2 h at three different temperatures ranges (373 K, 393 K and 413 K). Structural characterization of as prepared and annealed film was done by XRD technique and it was found that annealing improves the film crystal structure. UV-Vis spectrophotometer facilitates optical analysis of Sb0.5ZnTe film in wavelength range of 400–1000 nm. It was observed that band gap Eg of the Sb doped film increased while absorption coefficient (α) decrease with increase in heating temperature. These changes in optical properties were explained in terms of defect states.