Impurity diffusion activation energies in Al from first principles

Activation energies for vacancy-mediated impurity diffusion in face-centered-cubic aluminum have been computed ab initio for all technologically important alloying elements, as well as for most of the lanthanides. The so-called five-frequency rate model is used to establish the limiting vacancy interchange process. Many elements were shown to be limited by Al-vacancy interchanges. For these elements we showed that the diffusion activation energy is rather close to that for Al self-diffusion, and additionally the diffusion pre-exponential factor is of the same order as that for Al self-diffusion. The diffusion activation energy is shown to exhibit a linear relation with the solute partial molar volume in Al. In contrast, transition metals are shown to deviate strongly from these generalities. Diffusion of transition-metal atoms is limited by solute-vacancy interchanges that require remarkably high activation energies. Transition-metal diffusivities in Al show strong trends with the number of d-valence electrons but not with partial molar volume.