Chromium-vacancy clusters in dilute bcc Fe-Cr alloys: An ab initio study

Using an ab initio approach, we explore the stability of small vacancy and vacancy-chromium clusters in dilute body-centred cubic Fe-Cr alloys. To explain experimental observations described in C.D. Hardie et al., J. Nucl. Mater.439, 33 (2013) and showing the occurrence of Cr segregation in low-Cr alloys, we investigate if chromium can form stable bound configurations with vacancies in alloys with chromium concentration below the low-temperature chromium solubility limit of 10–11 at. %. We find that a single vacancy can attract up to four Cr atoms in the most energetically favourable cluster configuration. The magnetic origin of the binding energy trend is confirmed by a correlation between the average value of the magnetic moment of a Cr atom and the binding energy. Similar trends are also found for di-vacancy-Cr clusters, confirming that they likely also characterise larger systems not yet accessible to ab initio calculations. The ratio of the binding energy to the number of Cr atoms increased more than twice in the di-vacancy case in comparison with a single vacancy case. The binding energy of clusters containing single vacancy as well as di-vacancies can be well described by analytical expression that includes numbers of vacancy-vacancy, vacancy-Cr, and Cr-Cr pairs.