Confinement of motion of interstitial clusters and dislocation loops in BCC Fe–Cr alloys

This work is devoted to the study of the effect of Cr solutes on the mobility of self interstitial atom (SIA) clusters and small interstitial dislocation loops (of size up to a few nanometers) in concentrated Fe–Cr alloys. Atomistic simulations have been performed to characterize the variation of the free energy of interstitial loops in the Fe–15Cr alloy using the experimentally determined profile of Cr distribution along the path of a loop. It is shown that the presence of randomly distributed Cr in Fe leads to the creation of local trapping configurations for small SIA clusters. The strength (trapping energy) and density of these configurations depend on the Cr content. On the contrary, large SIA clusters (which can be described as 1/2〈1 1 1〉 dislocation loops) are strongly affected by the presence Cr–Cr pairs and larger Cr clusters, which act as barriers to their motion.