First principles study of hydrogen behaviors in hexagonal tungsten carbide

Understanding the behaviors of hydrogen in hexagonal tungsten carbide (WC) is of particular interest for fusion reactor design due to the presence of WC in the divertor of fusion reactors. Here, we have used first principles calculations to study the hydrogen behavior in WC. It is found that the most stable interstitial site for the hydrogen atom is the projection of the octahedral interstitial site on tungsten basal plane, followed by the site near the projection of the octahedral interstitial site on carbon basal plane. The binding energy between two interstitial hydrogen atoms is negative, suggesting that hydrogen itself is not capable of trapping another hydrogen atoms to form hydrogen molecule. The calculated results on the interaction between hydrogen and vacancy indicate that hydrogen atom is preferably trapped by vacancy defects and hydrogen molecule can not be formed in mono-vacancy. In addition, the hydrogen atom bound to carbon is only found in tungsten vacancy. We also study the migrations of hydrogen in WC and find that the interstitial hydrogen atom prefers to diffuse along the c-axis. Our studies provide some explanations for the results of the thermal desorption process of energetic hydrogen ion implanted into WC.