Comparison of atomistic and elasticity approaches for carbon diffusion near line defects in α-iron Original Research Article

Energy barriers for carbon migration in the neighborhood of line defects in body-centered cubic iron have been obtained by atomistic simulations. For this purpose, molecular statics with an Fe–C interatomic potential, based on the embedded atom method, has been employed. Results of these simulations have been compared to the predictions of anisotropic elasticity theory. The agreement is better for a carbon atom sitting on an octahedral site (energy minimum) than one on a tetrahedral site (saddle point). Absolute differences in the energy barriers obtained by the two methods are usually below 5 meV at distances larger than 1.5 nm from a screw dislocation and 2 nm (up to 4 nm in the glide plane) from the edge dislocation. Atomistic kinetic Monte Carlo simulations performed at T = 300 K and additional analysis based on the activation energies obtained by both methods show that they are in good qualitative agreement, despite some important quantitative discrepancies due to the large absolute errors found near the dislocation cores.