Extra contribution of transition-metal solutes to the solid-solution hardening of nickel.

Abstract

Experimental results on the solid-solution hardening of nickel alloys show that there is an anomalous hardening induced by transition-metal elements compared to the hardening induced by the B subgroup (sp valence) elements, which cannot be understood within the framework of the classical linear elasticity theory. It is demonstrated that this extra solution hardening by the transition-metal solute atoms can be correlated with the ``chemical interaction'' between the solutes and edge dislocations (band-structure-energy contribution to the solute-dislocation interaction). For this purpose, calculations of the chemical interaction energies, \ensuremath{\delta}${E}_{\mathrm{chem}}$ have been carried out for fifteen kinds of transition metals and eight kinds of B-subgroup solute atoms using a tight-binding-type electronic theory of s-, p-, and d-basis orbitals.