Role of the defect core in energetics of vacancies

Electronic structure calculations at macroscopic scales are employed to investigate the crucial role of a defect core in the energetics of vacancies in aluminium. We find that vacancy core energy is significantly influenced by the state of deformation at the vacancy core, especially volumetric strains. Insights from the core electronic structure and computed displacement fields show that this dependence on volumetric strains is closely related to the changing nature of the core structure under volumetric deformations. These results are in sharp contrast to mechanics descriptions based on elastic interactions that often consider defect core energies as an inconsequential constant. Calculations suggest that the variation in core energies with changing macroscopic deformations is quantitatively more significant than the corresponding variation in relaxation energies associated with elastic fields. Upon studying the influence of various macroscopic deformations, which include volumetric, uniaxial, biaxial and shear deformations, on the formation energies of vacancies, we show that volumetric deformations play a dominant role in governing the energetics of these defects. Further, by plotting formation energies of vacancies and di-vacancies against the volumetric strain corresponding to any macroscopic deformation, we find that all variations in the formation energies collapse on to a universal curve. This suggests a universal role of volumetric strains in the energetics of vacancies. Implications of these results in the context of dynamic failure in metals through shock-induced spalling are analysed.