Ab initio modeling of the two-dimensional energy landscape of screw dislocations in bcc transition metals

A density functional theory (DFT) study of the 1/2 < 111 > screw dislocation was performed in the following body-centered cubic transition metals: V, Nb, Ta, Cr, Mo, W, and Fe. The energies of the easy, hard, and split core configurations, as well as the pathways between them, were investigated and used to generate the two-dimensional (2D) Peierls potential, i.e. the energy landscape seen by the dislocation as a function of its position in the (111) plane. In all investigated elements, the nondegenerate easy core is the minimum energy configuration, while the split core configuration, centered in the immediate vicinity of a < 111 > atomic column, has a high energy near or above that of the hard core. This unexpected result yields 2D Peierls potentials very different from the usually assumed landscapes. The 2D Peierls potential in Fe differs from the other transition metals, with a monkey saddle instead of a local maximum located at the hard core. An estimation of the Peierls stress from the shape of the Peierls barrier is presented in all investigated metals. A strong group dependence of the core energy is also evidenced, related to the position of the Fermi level with respect to the minimum of the pseudogap of the electronic density of states.