It was recalled that the thermodynamic phase diagrams of alloys were usually computed, or experimentally determined, under the assumption of perfect crystallinity of the material. Here, it was shown that dislocations could change the phase stability of alloys and increase the size of the miscibility gap. This dislocation-induced destabilization originated from an interaction between the elastic fields of the dislocations, and those due to compositional variations. It was predicted that the characteristic time-scale for the growth of compositional fluctuations depended inversely upon the dislocation mobility.

Alloy Destabilization by Dislocations. F.Léonard, M.Haataja: Applied Physics Letters, 2005, 86[18], 181909 (3pp)