Hydrogen diffusion and trapping in bcc and fcc metals

The fundamental aspects of the metal--hydrogen systems are described. The large number of anomalous properties are the reason for continuous scientific effort. The time scale of hydrogen motion is extremely short. The characteristic frequencies of the localized modes of hydrogen in Ta, Nb, or V are in the order of 10-14 sec (energies between 0.1 to 0.2 eV); the jump frequencies for H-diffusion at elevated temperatures in those systems are between 10+12 to 10+13 sec-1. They are comparable with the correlation times for diffusion in liquids and more than ten orders of magnitude larger than the jump times for nitrogen in Nb. Out of the large number of experimental data this paper will survey only some recent results on representative fcc and bcc metals for dilute H solutions. The nature of the elementary step in H-diffusion is described. Here the temperature and isotope dependence of the H-diffusion coefficient gives hints to the mechanism involved. The experimental results are discussed in terms of semiclassical and quantum mechanical diffusion theories