Abstract
The thermodynamics of thermal vacancies in pure metals is analyzed within the compound energy formalism. It is shown that depending on the choice of the compound energy of the vacancies two ranges with different solution behavior for the equilibrium state are available. In order to assure the existence of unique solutions for the vacancy concentrations the compound energy for vacancies must exceed a critical value. But if this compound energy is in the range between zero and the critical value additional metastable states with different vacancy concentrations become possible. However, if the compound energy for vacancies is set to zero then the Gibbs energy of the respective phase approaches infinitely negative values and no stable equilibrium can exist. A dataset containing such a phase cannot possess any stable state with a global minimum of the Gibbs energy. The results of this analysis are illustrated by the example of thermal vacancies in tungsten.
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