Interaction of carbon–vacancy complex with minor alloying elements of ferritic steels

Interstitial carbon, dissolved in bcc matrix of ferritic steels, plays an important role in the evolution of radiation-induced microstructure since it exhibits strong interaction with vacancies. Frequent formation and break-up of carbon–vacancy pairs, occurring in the course of irradiation, affect both kinetics of the accumulation of point defect clusters and carbon spatial distribution. The interaction of typical alloying elements (Mn, Ni, Cu, Si, Cr and P) in ferritic steels used as structural materials in nuclear reactors with a carbon–vacancy complex is analyzed using ab initio techniques. It is found that all the considered solutes form stable triple clusters resulting in the increase of the total binding energy by 0.2–0.3 eV. As a result of the formation of energetically favourable solute–carbon–vacancy triplets, the dissociation energy for vacancy/carbon emission is also increased by ∼0.2–0.3 eV, suggesting that the solutes enhance thermal stability of carbon–vacancy complex. Association of carbon–vacancy pairs with multiple solute clusters is found to be favorable for Ni, Cu and P. The energetic stability of solute(s)–carbon–vacancy complexes was rationalized on the basis of pairwise interaction data and by analyzing the variation of local magnetic moments on atoms constituting the clusters.