Hybrid quantum/classical study of hydrogen-decorated screw dislocations in tungsten: Ultrafast pipe diffusion, core reconstruction, and effects on glide mechanism

Petr Grigorev (1) , T D Swinburne (2, 3) , James R Kermode (1)

1 University of Warwick [Coventry]
2 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
3 CINaM - Centre Interdisciplinaire de Nanoscience de Marseille

The interaction of hydrogen (H) with dislocations in tungsten (W) must be understood in order to model the mechanical response of future plasma-facing materials for fusion applications. Here, hybrid quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) simulations are employed to study the 111 screw dislocation glide in W in the presence of H, using the virtual work principle to obtain energy barriers for dislocation glide, H segregation, and pipe diffusion. We provide a convincing validation of the QM/MM approach against full DFT energy-based methods. This is possible because the compact core and relatively weak elastic fields of 111 screw dislocations allow them to be contained in periodic DFT supercells. We also show that H segregation stabilizes the split-core structure while leaving the Peierls barrier almost unchanged. Furthermore, we find an energy barrier of less than 0.05 eV for pipe diffusion of H along dislocation cores. Our quantum-accurate calculations provide important reference data for the construction of larger-scale material models.

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Petr Grigorev, T D Swinburne, James R Kermode. Hybrid quantum/classical study of hydrogen-decorated screw dislocations in tungsten: Ultrafast pipe diffusion, core reconstruction, and effects on glide mechanism. Physical Review Materials, 2020, 4, ⟨10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.4.023601⟩. ⟨hal-02477131⟩