Effect of Mo on the phase stability and elastic mechanical properties of Ti–Mo random alloys from ab initio calculations

Abstract

Ti–Mo alloys are promising materials for shape memory alloys and biomedical materials. Whereas, the appearance of metastable ω phase can cause embrittlement and destroy the shape memory effect. In order to avoid the ω phase, the effect of Mo on the temperature dependent lattice parameters, phase stability and elastic mechanical properties of β, α, and ω Ti1−xMox (x = 0–2.0) random alloys was systematically investigated by using the exact muffin-tin orbitals method in combination with the coherent potential approximation. The theoretical predictions for the lattice parameters are in good agreement with the available experiments. Results show that β Ti0.96Mo0.04 can almost transform to ω phase without lattice deformation and volume change, which suggests that the athermal ω phase is easier to precipitate and grow near 4 at.% Mo content in the β Ti1−xMox alloys. The critical content of Mo for the competed stabilization of β phase at T = 300 K is ~11.2 at.%. Its valence electron concentration of 4.224 is viewed as a necessary criterion for the competed phase stability. The calculations of formation energy are used to explain successfully why the partitioning of Mo can be found in Ti0.91Mo0.09 alloy after annealing. Through the analysis of formation energy, both Mo addition and increasing temperature can stabilize the β phase. The calculated Cauchy pressure, Pugh’s ratio, Poisson ratio, and Young’s modulus suggests that ω phase is intrinsically brittle and has large Young’s modulus compared with β and α phases.