Nieves, Alex M
Email Address
ORCID
Disciplines
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
Publication Monte Carlo Analysis of Stress-Directed Phase Segregation in Binary Thin Film Alloys Under Nonisothermal Annealing(2008-01-01) Nieves, Alex M; Vitek, Vaclav; Sinno, TalidThe use of patterned stress fields to direct phase separation in thin film alloys is investigated computationally with Monte Carlo simulations in which atomic interactions are represented by a Lennard-Jones potential. We show that careful design of annealing schedules based on consideration of the system phase diagram can lead to vastly enhanced patterning kinetics. In particular, by avoiding the low temperature formation of highly stable nuclei within the entire system, the kinetics of patterning are accelerated by rapid monomerdiffusion, rather than classical Ostwald ripening in which small precipitates must dissolve to feed larger ones.Publication Detailed Microscopic Analysis of Self-interstitial Aggregation in Silicon. II. Thermodynamic Analysis of Single Clusters(2010-07-19) Kapur, Sumeet; Nieves, Alex M; Sinno, TalidWe analyze results generated by large-scale molecular-dynamics simulations of self-interstitial clusters in crystalline silicon using a recently developed computational method for probing the thermodynamics of defects in solids. In this approach, the potential-energy landscape is sampled with lengthy molecular-dynamics simulations and repeated energy minimizations in order to build distribution functions that quantitatively describe the formation thermodynamics of a particular defect cluster. Using this method, a comprehensive picture for interstitial aggregation is proposed. In particular, we find that both vibrational and configuration entropic factors play important roles in determining self-interstitial cluster morphology. In addition to the expected role of temperature, we also find that applied (hydrostatic) pressure and the commensurate lattice strain greatly influence the resulting aggregation pathways. Interestingly, the effect of pressure appears to manifest not by altering the thermodynamics of individual defect configurations but rather by changing the overall energy landscape associated with the defect. These effects appear to be general and are predicted using multiple, well-tested, empirical interatomic potentials for silicon. Our results suggest that internal stress environments within a silicon wafer (e.g., created by ion implantation) could have profound effects on the observed selfinterstitial cluster morphology.Publication Monte Carlo Analysis of Stress-Directed Phase Segregation in Binary Thin Film Alloys Under Nonisothermal Annealing(2008-11-14) Nieves, Alex M; Vitek, Vaclav; Sinno, TalidThe use of patterned stress fields to direct phase separation in thin film alloys is investigated computationally with Monte Carlo simulations in which atomic interactions are represented by a Lennard-Jones potential.We show that careful design of annealing schedules based on consideration of the system phase diagram can lead to vastly enhanced patterning kinetics. In particular, by avoiding the low temperature formation of highly stable nuclei within the entire system, the kinetics of patterning are accelerated by rapid monomer diffusion, rather than classical Ostwald ripening in which small precipitates must dissolve to feed larger ones.Publication Atomistic Analysis of Phase Segregation Patterning in Binary Thin Films Using Applied Mechanical Fields(2010-03-02) Nieves, Alex M; Vitek, Vaclay; Sinno, TalidThe patterned compositional evolution in thin films of a binary alloy controlled by modulated stress fields is studied by employing Monte Carlo simulations. General features of stress-patterned phase segregation are probed using a binary Lennard-Jones potential in which the lattice misfit between the two components of the alloy is varied systematically. In general, patterning of the microstructure is found to be more robust in the low-mismatch binary systems because large lattice mismatch promotes plastic, and therefore, irreversible relaxation, during annealing. It is shown that some control over the relaxation process can be achieved by careful design of the applied thermal annealing history. Additional calculations have been performed using two other potentials for binary metallic systems, an embedded-atom method (EAM) potential for Cu–Ag and a modified embedded-atom method (MEAM) potential for Cu–Ni that represent examples of high and low-mismatched systems, respectively. The results obtained with generic Lennard-Jones potentials are in excellent agreement with those from the EAM and MEAM potentials suggesting that it is possible to derive general guidelines for accomplishing stress-patterned segregation in a variety of thin films of binary alloys.Publication An Enthalpy Landscape View of Homogeneous Melting in Crystals(2011-08-17) Nieves, Alex M; Sinno, TalidA detailed analysis of homogeneous melting in crystalline materials modeled by empirical interatomic potentials is presented using the theory of inherent structures.We show that the homogeneous melting of a perfect, infinite crystalline material can be inferred directly from the growth exponent of the inherent structure density-of-states distribution expressed as a function of formation enthalpy. Interestingly, this growth is already established by the presence of very few homogeneously nucleated point defects in the form of Frenkel pairs. This finding supports the notion that homogeneous melting is appropriately defined in terms of a one-phase theory and does not require detailed consideration of the liquid phase. We then apply this framework to the study of applied hydrostatic compression on homogeneous melting and show that the inherent structure analysis used here is able to capture the correct pressure-dependence for two crystalline materials, namely silicon and aluminum. The coupling between the melting temperature and applied pressure arises through the distribution of formation volumes for the various inherent structures.