Empirical Many-Body Potential Energy Functions for Iron

Gao Fei, Roy L. Johnston and John N. Murrell

School of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QJ, United Kingdom.

Article: Journal of Physical Chemistry 1993, 97, 12073-12082.

Abstract

An empirical many-body potential energy function has been derived for iron which reproduces the phonon dispersion curves and elastic constants of both low-temperature (bcc) α-Fe and high-temperature (fcc) &gamma:-Fe. γ-Fe is a metastable phase, which is calculated to lie 0.02 eV/atom higher than α-Fe, with a low barrier (0.04 eV/atom) along the Bain path for interconversion of the bcc and fcc phases. The "α+γ" iron potential gives a sensible order of stabilities of a number of two- and three-dimensional structures and a satisfactory description of the growth pattern of small iron clusters.

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