When studying atomic hydrogen interactions with solid surfaces, severa
l problems appear, including the problem of atomic hydrogen concentrat
ion measurement. In this work we analyse the use of catalytic nickel p
robe for the H concentration measurement. We use novel artificial inte
lligence techniques to obtain differential equations that describe the
behavior of the probe directly from measurements. The equations show
that the recombination coefficient for the atomic H on the nickel surf
ace does not change substantially with the probe temperature which mea
ns that the catalytic nickel probe could be used as a good indicator o
f the atomic H concentration in the gas. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd
. All rights reserved.