Interaction of interstitial atoms and configurational contribution to their thermodynamic activity in V, Nb, and Ta

The pairwise interaction energies of O–O and N–N in bcc metals of group VB, which were calculated earlier using first-principles methods, have been employed to analyze the effect of the interatomic interactions on the configurational contribution to the thermodynamic activity. The strong effect of interstitial- interstitial interaction has been shown. The configurational contribution grows in the row (Nb–N) → (V–N) → (Ta–N) → (Nb–O) → (V–O) → (Ta–O), which is caused by a weakening of the mutual attraction of interstitial atoms in these solid solutions. The strong repulsion that characterizes the majority of coordination shells only weakly affects the thermodynamic activity. The character of the temperature dependence of the configurational contribution is defined by the strength of the mutual attraction of the interstitial atoms, i.e., upon strong attraction, the contribution increases with increasing temperature (Nb–N, V–N, Ta–N, and Nb–O) and, upon weak attraction, it decreases (V–O and Ta–O).