The influence of carbon vacancies on the stacking fault energy of TiC

The influence of carbon vacancies on the stacking fault energy (SFE) of TiC has been studied. It is found that SFE of TiC is depending on positions and concentration of the carbon vacancies. The closer carbon vacancies to the stacking faults (SFs) and the higher the concentration are, the smaller SFE will be. In other words, carbon vacancies in TiC with SFs prefer to segregate around SFs. When TiC with a few carbon vacancies, carbon vacancies tend to be uniformly distributed around SFs, but if a lot of carbon vacancies exist, they will be long-range ordered around SFs. The study of the diffusion of carbon vacancies demonstrates that carbon vacancies can be more easily diffused in TiC with SFs, especially in the SF layers, which further confirms the above results.