Evaluation of Cr Concentration Effect on Displacement Cascades in Fe–Cr Alloys with Piecewise Potential

Abstract

A piecewise potential was constructed with combination of the concentration-dependent EAM (CD-EAM) potential and Ziegler–Biersack–Littmark (ZBL) potential, and the displacement cascades in random Fe–Cr binary alloys with a wide range of Cr concentration from 0 to 20% were simulated to evaluate the effect of Cr concentration on defect formation and evolution during the cascades. The Cr concentration has little or no effect on the fraction of vacancy clusters, the number of surviving Frenkel pairs, or the self-interstitial and vacancy cluster sizes and a slight effect on the peak time and peak defect number, but a considerable effect on the Cr enrichment in the peak and surviving defects in the cascaded Fe–Cr alloys. With the increase in Cr concentration, the Cr enrichment in the peak and surviving defects exhibits a downtrend. The higher enrichment degree in the surviving defects than in the peak defects shows more difficult recombination of Cr SIAs with vacancies.