Molecular-dynamics simulation of hydrogen diffusion in palladium

Molecular-dynamics simulations for hydrogen diffusion in Pd are performed for a system consisting of 256 Pd atoms and 8 H atoms at the temperature T=623 K. Under these conditions detailed quasielastic-neutron-scattering (QNS) data are available. For the interatomic interactions we use the embedded-atom method (EAM), which incorporates some essential many-body effects in metals. Based on the EAM approach, the wave-vector dependence of the width of the QNS peak is investigated in detail. It is found that a single electronically adiabatic potential-energy surface cannot reproduce the observed wave-vector dependence. After incorporating the coupling of hydrogen atoms to the low-lying electron-hole pair excitations among the conduction electrons, close agreement with the experimental data is obtained. This is a strong indication that one has to go beyond the Born-Oppenheimer approximation in order to characterize correctly the diffusive motion of hydrogen in metals. To reveal the diffusive behavior in more detail, the residence time distribution and the correlation character in diffusion direction are investigated. We found that including the nonadiabatic corrections reduces the probability for the H atoms to move over several lattice sites without getting trapped in between. As a result, the motion of the H atoms becomes more similar to that assumed in the Chudley-Elliott model, which describes well the QNS data for the wave-vector dependence of the width.