Hydrogen-Vacancy Interactions in Fe-C Alloys

Energetics and concentrations of hydrogen-containing point defect clusters (PDCs) in Fe-C alloys are calculated and cast into a PDC dominance diagram. Because of the strong binding effects of iron vacancies on the stability of the clusters, hydrogen accumulation requires the total hydrogen and vacan...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yip, Sidney, Lau, Timothy T., Monasterio, Paul Rene, Van Vliet, Krystyn J
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Physical Society 2010
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/51371
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5735-0560
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2727-0137
Description
Summary:Energetics and concentrations of hydrogen-containing point defect clusters (PDCs) in Fe-C alloys are calculated and cast into a PDC dominance diagram. Because of the strong binding effects of iron vacancies on the stability of the clusters, hydrogen accumulation requires the total hydrogen and vacancy concentrations to be comparable. As a result of the interplay between repulsive and attractive binding processes, PDC populations in Fe-C-H effectively decouple into the binary systems Fe-C and Fe-H. This results in significant vacancy-hydrogen PDC populations even for low total hydrogen concentrations.