Effect of the vacancy interaction on the antiphase domain growth process in a two dimensional binary alloy

Abstract

The influence of diffusing vacancies on the antiphase domain growth process in a binary alloy is studied by Monte Carlo simulations. The system is modelled by means of a Blume-Emery-Griffiths hamiltonian with a biquadratic coupling parameter K controlling the microscopic interactions between vacancies. We obtain that, independently of K, the vacancies exhibit a tendency to concentrate on the antiphase boundaries. This gives rise to an effective interactions between movin interfaces and diffusing vacancies which strongly influences the domain growth process. One distinguishes three different behaviours: i) for K<1 the growth is anisotropic and can be described by algebraic laws with exponents lower than 1/2, ii) for K=1 we find standard Allen-Cahn growth and iii) for K>1 the growth is slown down but still curvature driven.