Stacking-fault energies in simple metals: applications to BCC metals

Abstract

Presents a general method for calculating the stacking-fault energy in simple metals, and applies this to the (112) faults in body-centered cubic (BCC) metals. The method contains no approximations for a given wavenumber characteristic (or equivalently the pair potential). The results show that metastable faults do indeed exist in the simple BCC metals (Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs, Ca, Sr, Ba), but the currently available potentials do not yield sufficiently accurate stacking-fault energies because they do not predict BCC as the lowest energy phase.