Determination of the phase diagram from interatomic potentials: The iron–chromium case

Prior to applying any interatomic potential, it is important to know the stability of the different phases it describes. In the literature many methods to determine the phase diagram from an interatomic potential are described. Although for pure elements the procedure to obtain the thermodynamic functions is well established, for alloys it is not. In this work a method is developed to determine the phase diagram, i.e., solubility limits and spinodal gap, for the case of miscibility gaps. The method combines Monte Carlo simulations in the isobaric semi-grand canonical ensemble, full thermodynamic integration and Redlich–Kister expansions to parameterize the Gibbs free energy. Besides numerical inaccuracies, this method does not rely on any physical approximations to determine the phase diagram of a given interatomic potential. The method is applied to two different Fe–Cr potentials that are widely used in the literature. The resulting phase diagrams are discussed by comparing them to the experimental one and ones obtained in other works from the same potentials.

► Presently no established method exists to obtain the miscibility gap from interatomic potentials.
► A rigorous method is established to obtain miscibility gaps and spinodal gaps.
► The method is applied to two Fe–Cr potentials that are available in the literature.
► The results are compared with the literature to evaluate the performance of the proposed method.