0000000000343885
AUTHOR
A. Elsener
Variable-charge method applied to study coupled grain boundary migration in the presence of oxygen
International audience; One of the important differences between simulation and experiments in grain boundary (GB)-dominated metallic structures is the lack of impurities such as oxygen in computational samples. A modified variable-charge method [Elsener A, Politano O, Derlet PM, Van Swygenhoven H. Modell Simul Mater Sci Eng 2008;16:025006] based on the Streitz and Mintmire approach [Streitz FH, Mintmire JW. Phys Rev B 1994;50:11996] is used to study coupled GB motion in an Al bicrystal with a [1 1 2] symmetrical tilt GB in the presence of substitutional O, and compared with the stick–slip process identified by Cahn and Mishin [Cahn JW, Mishin Y, Suzuki A. Acta Mater 2006;54:4953]. It is found…
A local chemical potential approach within the variable charge method formalism
A new and computationally efficient implementation of the variable charge method of Streitz and Mintmire (1994 Phys. Rev. B 50 11996) is presented. In particular a local chemical potential approach that optimizes the charge on only those atoms expected to be ionic is developed. By doing so, the charge fluctuation problem experienced in regions far from any oxygen is solved, leading to a linear minimization problem of the electrostatic energy. In the dilute oxygen limit, such an approach can lead to at least an order of magnitude saving in computation.