Semi-empirical study of metastable alloys produced by ion implantation in metals

A method recently proposed to parametrize the occurrence of solubility in equilibrium solid alloys is applied here to metastable alloys produced by ion implantation in metals. In this method each chemical element is characterized by three parameters : the atomic radius R, the electronegativity φ and the electron density n at the boundary of bulk atomic cells. Δφ and Δn (Δ indicates the difference between solute and solvent) are combined into a new parameter, the heat of solution ΔH S O (without a size mismatch term) given by the theory of Miedema. Then, the two parameters ΔH S O and ΔR are used to construct a two-dimensional map for a given host. In this map, all the substitutional elements are neatly separated from the non-substitutional elements.