
Materials in harsh environments
Corrosion and hydrogen embrittlement are among the most serious threats to the durability and safety of metals, causing an estimated €2.5 trillion in damage each year — around 3.4% of global GDP. Enhancing corrosion resistance is therefore crucial for sustainable and safe infrastructures and industry. While corrosion, driven largely by galvanic reactions in microstructures, leads to material loss and failures worldwide, hydrogen embrittlement is a hidden and often catastrophic threat, especially to high-strength alloys — and a key challenge for hydrogen-based technologies.
At MPI-SusMat, we are at the forefront of corrosion and hydrogen research, deploying state-of-the-art methods from advanced Kelvin-probe techniques to single-atom hydrogen detection with atom probe tomography.