An interatomic potential for the ternary Ag–Cu–Sn system, an important material system related to the applications of lead-free solders, is developed on the basis of the second nearest-neighbor modified embedded-atom-method formalism. Potential parameters for the ternary and related binary systems are determined based on the recently improved unary description of pure Sn and the present improvements to the unary descriptions of pure Ag and Cu. To ensure the sufficient performance of atomistic simulations in various applications, the optimization of potential parameters is conducted based on the force-matching method that utilizes density functional theory predictions of energies and forces on various atomic configurations. We validate that the developed interatomic potential exhibits sufficient accuracy and transferability to various physical properties of pure metals, intermetallic compounds, solid solutions, and liquid solutions. The proposed interatomic potential can be straightforwardly used in future studies to investigate atomic-scale phenomena in soldering applications.
Graphical abstract
A new second nearest-neighbor modified embedded-atom model-based PtTi binary interatomic potential was developed by improving the pure Pt unary descriptions of the pre-existing interatomic potential. Specifically, the interatomic potential was developed focusing on the shape memory-associated phenomena and the properties of equiatomic PtTi, which has potential applications as a high-temperature shape memory alloy. The simulations using the developed interatomic potential reproduced the physical properties of the equiatomic PtTi and various intermetallic compound/alloy compositions and structures. Large-scale molecular dynamic simulations of single crystalline and nanocrystalline configurations were performed to examine the temperature- and stress-induced martensitic transformations. The results show good consistency with the experiments and demonstrate the reversible phase transformation of PtTi SMA between the cubic B2 austenite and the orthorhombic B19 martensite phases. In addition, the importance of anisotropy, constraint and the orientation of grains on the transformation temperature, mechanical response, and microstructure of SMA are presented.
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