Diffusion of Y and Ti/Zr in bcc iron: A first principles study

The diffusion of yttrium plays an important role in the kinetics of formation of oxide nanoclusters in oxide dispersion strengthened alloys. Also, the diffusivity of minor alloying elements like Ti and Zr are of special interest as they are crucial for fine dispersion of oxide nanoclusters in the ferritic matrix. These solute atoms occupy substitutional sites in bcc Fe. The diffusion coefficients of these solute atoms were calculated using Le Claire’s nine frequency model involving the vacancy mechanism. We have done detailed density functional theory calculation of the interaction of these solute atoms with vacancies (□) and estimated various migration energy barriers of the vacancies in the presence of these solute atoms using nudged elastic band method. Strikingly, compared with Zr and Ti, Y shows a very large relaxation towards first neighbor vacancy resulting in strong binding with the vacancy. The Y-□ binding energy of 1.45 eV is almost double that of Zr-□ binding energy of 0.78 eV. We have also compared the calculated diffusion coefficients of these solute atoms with the experimental values.