Material Science on Pd-D System to Study the Occurrence of Excess Power

A recent joint work (1) identified the crucial role of material science in improving control of the Pd-D system to enhance the production of excess power during electrochemical loading of palladium foils with deuterium. Very high reproducibility, close to 100%, in loading Pd up to D/Pd ~1 (atomic fraction) was achieved. High loading about the threshold value of 0.9 is considered necessary to achieve the effect. This work demonstrated it is necessary but not sufficient. As a consequence, the focus of our research moved to the material properties of cathodes, especially surface characteristics, and an effort to correlate these properties with cathode performance during electrolysis. This paper describes the material properties examined that appear to produce excess heat.