Abstract
The effect of hydrogen on the localized plasticity of an industrial material, SUS310S stainless steel, has been investigated using a combination of nanoindentation and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The load versus displacement curves show that 73.4 wt.ppm hydrogen in the SUS310S sample causes a 41% decrease in the first excursion load but has little effect on the first excursion depth, which indicates that hydrogen enhances dislocation nucleation and promotes dislocation emission and multiplication. The AFM images of the pile-ups around the indentation indicate that hydrogen causes two types of slip step in the {111} slip planes, indicating that hydrogen promotes slip planarity and localized plasticity.