Modelling Atomic Arrangements in Multicomponent Alloys

This book provides a comprehensive overview of a computationally efficient approach for modelling the phase behaviour of multicomponent alloys from first principles, describing both short- and long-range atomic ordering tendencies. The study of multicomponent alloy systems, which combine three or more base elements in near-equal ratios, has garnered significant attention in materials science due to the potential for the creation of novel materials with superior properties for a variety of applications. High-entropy alloys, which contain four or more base elements, have emerged as a particularly fascinating subset of these systems, demonstrating extraordinary strength and fracture resistance, among other desirable properties. The book presents a novel modelling approach for studying the phase behaviour of these systems, which is based on a perturbative analysis of the internal energy of the disordered alloy as evaluated within the Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker (KKR) formulation of density functional theory (DFT), using the coherent potential approximation (CPA) to average over chemical disorder. Application of a Landau-type theory to an approximate form of the Gibbs free energy enables direct inference of chemical disorder/order transitions. In addition, the perturbative analysis facilitates extraction of atom-atom effective pair interactions for further atomistic simulations. The connection between the arrangement of atoms in a material and its magnetic properties is also studied. By outlining and applying the proposed modelling techniques to several systems of interest, this book serves as a valuable resource for materials scientists, physicists, and chemists alike, seeking to understand and develop new alloy systems with enhanced materials properties.