Temperature-induced martensitic phase transitions in gum-metal approximants: First-principles investigations for Ti(3)Nb

Author(s)
Petr Lazar, Michal Jahnatek, Juergen Hafner, Naoyuki Nagasako, Ryoji Asahi, Claudia Blaas-Schenner, Markus Stöhr, Raimund Podloucky
Abstract

We present a first-principles investigation of the structures and the dynamical stability of the austenite and martensite phases of binary Ti(3)Nb alloys, used as a model system for the superelastic and superplastic gum-metal alloy. For the body-centered cubic high-temperature beta phase, structural models are constructed by optimizing the chemical decoration of a large supercell and by a cluster expansion method. The energetically most favorable structure is found to be elastically stable but dynamically unstable in the harmonic approximation. At finite temperature anharmonic phonon-phonon interactions treated in a self-consistent phonon approximation stabilize the structure already at room temperature. For the low-temperature alpha', omega, and alpha '' phases stable structure models have been constructed. For the hexagonal alpha' phase a model is generated by optimizing the chemical decoration of a supercell based on the hexagonal B(h) lattice. The hexagonal omega structure may be derived from the body-centered cubic beta phase using the (111) plane collapse model. The structure of the orthorhombic alpha '' phase may be viewed as produced by a strain-induced transformation of the body-centered cubic beta phase, albeit with a different chemical decoration. The relaxed structures of the alpha', omega, and alpha '' phases were found to be both elastically and dynamically stable in the low-temperature limit. The martensitic temperatures for the beta -> alpha '', beta -> omega, and beta -> alpha' transitions were estimated by comparing the Helmholtz free energies as a function of temperature.

Organisation(s)
Computational Materials Physics, Department of Physical Chemistry
External organisation(s)
Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc.
Journal
Physical Review B
Volume
84
No. of pages
17
ISSN
1098-0121
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.84.054202
Publication date
2011
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
104017 Physical chemistry, 103018 Materials physics
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/29af94c7-1187-4cc4-b03a-f6cdb14169c6