Influence of atomic size mismatch on binary alloy phase diagrams

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the consequences of atomic size mismatch on the thermodynamics and the topology of binary phase diagrams of face centred cubic alloys. Simple pairwise interatomic potentials with few controlling parameters are used to identify general tendencies. Thermodynamic states are computed by Monte Carlo simulations on a non-rigid lattice. A special attention has been paid to the comparison between calculations in the canonical ensemble, where composition–temperature phase diagrams are determined through van der Waals loops, and in the grand canonical ensemble, where phase diagrams are computed using an interface migration technique. It is shown that these two procedures lead essentially to the same incoherent phase diagram. In the case of phase separating systems, we argue that the introduction of a size mismatch leads to a shrinkage of the solid solution domain and that the asymmetry of the miscibility gap is essentially controlled by the anharmonicity of the heteroatomic potential. Finally, in the case of ordering systems, we show that the asymmetry of the phase diagram may be due to the anharmonicity of the pair potentials or to the differences between their curvatures, the former effect being dominant if the atomic size mismatch is large.