Hysteresis and the role of nucleation and growth in the hydrogenation of Mg nanolayers

We investigated the hydrogenation of 3 and 10 nm Mg layers sandwiched between Ti using an optical transmission technique (hydrogenography). We observe in situ the two dimensional nucleation and growth of single hydride domains of up to several millimeters in diameter. The low density of nuclei points to preferential nucleation at heterogeneous sites. From an analysis of the growth kinetics we deduce an extremely large edge boundary energy, which we relate to the plastic deformations inherent to the 30% volume expansion of the MgH2. We find that the nucleation and growth process affects the hysteresis between absorption and desorption. Especially, the absorption branch can be lowered when nucleation barriers are removed. Our results show that when discussing the effect of nano-structuring on hydrogenation it may be quite complex to distinguish the thermodynamic and kinetic effects involved.