Suppression of the critical temperature in binary vanadium hydrides

• Addition of 10 mol% Cr to V increases the β-hydride TC to >200 °C.
• Addition of 10 mol% Ni to V increases the β-hydride TC to >400 °C.
• Addition of 10 mol% Al to V decreases the β-hydride TC to <30 °C.
• V90Al10 membrane can be cycled to <30 °C under H2 without β-hydride formation.

The tendency of vanadium-based alloy membranes to embrittle is the biggest commercialisation barrier for this hydrogen separation technology. Excessive hydrogen absorption and the α → β hydride transition both contribute to brittle failure of these membranes. Alloying is known to reduce absorption, but the influence of alloying on hydride phase formation under conditions relevant to membrane operation has not been studied in great detail previously. Here, the effect of Cr, Ni, and Al alloying additions on V–H phase equilibrium has been studied using hydrogen absorption measurements and in situ X-ray diffraction studies. The addition of 10 mol% Ni increases the critical temperature for α + β hydride formation to greater than 400 °C, compared to 170 °C for V. Cr also increases the critical temperature, to between 200 and 300 °C. The addition of 10 mol% Al, however, suppresses the critical temperature to less than 30 °C, thereby enabling this material to be cycled thermally and hydrostatically while precluding formation of the β-hydride phase. This is despite Al also decreasing hydrogen absorption. The implication of this finding is that one of the mechanisms of brittle failure in vanadium-based hydrogen-selective membranes has been eliminated, thereby increasing the robustness of this material relative to V.