Study reveals clues to cause of hydrogen embrittlement in metals - Hydrogen can easily dissolve and migrate within metals to make these otherwise ductile materials brittle and more prone to failures. Now, researchers at McGill University in Montreal and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, have shown that the physics of hydrogen embrittlement may be rooted in how hydrogen modifies material behaviors at the nanoscale. In a study published in Nature Materials, they present a model that can accurately predict the occurrence of hydrogen embrittlement. http://www.mcgill.ca/channels/news/study-reveals-clues-cause-hydrogen-embrittlement-219051