The research outcome of the three joint research teams in the School of Advanced Materials Engineering (Professor Hee-man Choe, Yong-suk Kim, and Won-jong Nam) that was executed in support of the national core research support project by the National Research Foundation of Korea (Research Institute of New Material Processing, Research director: Professor Gwon, Hoon) decorated the cover of the August 2013 issue of Steel Research International, a representative international journal specialized in steel engineering.

This research (“Hydrogen Softening in the Thin Plate of Microcrystalline 316L Stainless Steel”, Steel Research International, 84(8), 2013, p812) is about the interaction between hydrogen and steel that has been a critical issue in the energy (gas/oil) and nuclear power-plants industry. Hydrogen that performs very fast diffusion velocity causes negative effect (hydrogen softening) as it reduces the strength and ductility in steel materials due to the unexpected penetration and diffusion of hydrogen into steel. Such phenomenon was examined and analyzed from a new perspective in this research. By using very thin 316L steel sample that had a certain sized crystal grain, the operating phenomenon of hydrogen that becomes complicated due to different experimental procedures and interpretations was easily investigated and accessed. Such outcomes suggest a new experimental/theoretical technique in terms of the experiment and interpretation method on hydrogen’s mechanism that affects metallic materials.