Development of an angular-dependent potential for radiation damage study in Fe-Si solutions

BY Zhang and Y Wang and JC Chen and JH Li and WS Lai, JOURNAL OF NUCLEAR MATERIALS, 545, 152643 (2021).

DOI: 10.1016/j.jnucmat.2020.152643

The low-alloyed steels are widely-used structural materials in radiation environments and among their various alloying elements the non-metallic element Si is usually essential. However, due to the different bonding features, it is difficult to describe the atomistic behaviors of Fe-Si with interatomic potentials. The current study presents an angular- dependent interatomic potential of Fe-Si, which can well describe the physical properties including lattice constants and mixing enthalpy of Fe-Si solid solutions. Specifically, the potential satisfactorily describes the formation energies of radiation defects in Fe-Si alloy. Applying this potential, molecular dynamics simulations are employed to investigate the radiation damage in Fe-Si solid solutions. It turns out that the addition of Si does not significantly affect the Frenkel pairs produced by collision cascades. However, Si appears to increase the fraction of mono-vacancy in Fe-Si steels. (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V.

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