A First-Principles Study of Short Range Order in Cu-Zn

Abstract

Recently, measurements of short-range order (SRO) diffuse neutron scattering intensity have been performed on quenched Cu-Zn alloys with 22.4 to 31.1 atomic percent (a/o) Zn, and pair interactions were obtained by Inverse Monte Carlo simulation [1]. These results are compared to SRO intensities and effective pair interactions obtained from first-principles electronic structure calculations. The theoretical SRO intensities were calculated with the Cluster Variation Method (CVM) in the tetrahedron-octahedron approximation with first-principles pair interactions as input. More generally, phase stability in the Cu-Zn alloy system is discussed, using ab-initio energetic properties.