Effects of temperature and point defects on the stability of C15 Laves phase in iron: A molecular dynamics investigation

Molecular dynamics simulations are used to investigate the stabilities of C15 Laves phase structures subjected to temperature and point defects. The simulations based on different empirical potentials show that the bulk perfect C15 Laves phase appears to be stable under a critical temperature in a range from 350 K to 450 K, beyond which it becomes disordered and experiences an abrupt decrement of elastic modulus. In the presence of both vacancy and self-interstitial, the bulk C15 Laves phase becomes unstable at room temperature and prefers to transform into an imperfect body centered cubic (BCC) structure containing free vacancies or vacancy clusters. When a C15 cluster is embedded in BCC iron, the annihilation of interstitials occurs due to the presence of the vacancy, while it exhibits a phase transformation into a (1/2)<111> dislocation loop due to the presence of the self-interstitial.