Paper detail

Diffusion behavior in Nickel-Aluminium and Aluminium-Uranium diluted alloys

Impurity diffusion coefficients are entirely obtained from a low cost classical molecular statics technique (CMST). In particular, we show how CMST is appropriate in order to describe the impurity diffusion behavior mediated by a vacancy mechanism. In the context of the five-frequency model, CMST allows to calculate all the microscopic parameters, namely: the free energy of vacancy formation, the vacancy-solute binding energy and the involved jump frequencies, from them, we obtain the macroscopic transport magnitudes such as: correlation factor, solvent-enhancement factor, Onsager and diffusion coefficients. Specifically, we perform our calculations in f.c.c. diluted Ni-Al and Al-U alloys. Results for the tracer diffusion coefficients of solvent and solute species are in agreement with available experimental data for both systems. We conclude that in Ni-Al and Al-U systems solute atoms migrate by direct interchange with vacancies in all the temperature range where there are available experimental data. In the Al-U case, a vacancy drag mechanism could occur at temperatures below 550K.