The research work presented in this thesis comprises an electron microscopy and spectroscopy study of crystal defects that relate to the occurrence of different colours in natural and synthetic diamonds. Two principal lines of investigation have been covered, each with its own objective. The first aims to identify the source of brown colour in natural and synthetic diamond and the second to ascertain the distribution of colour inducing point defects in synthetic diamond. An outline of both areas of research is given below.1) Brown colour in natural and synthetic diamondsColour is a physical property that can be very difficult to characterise in diamond and consequently it receives regular attention from scientists working in the gem industry. In this work, the crystal structures of brown and colourless natural type IIa diamonds are compared along with brown coloured synthetic diamonds manufactured using the chemical vapour deposition (CVD) process. Numerous attempts have been made to trace the origin of brown tints in natural diamond, with the most likely sources, dislocations and nitrogen impurities, ruled out through the application of various analytical techniques. Recently more emphasis has been placed on the study of vacancy related defects in natural diamond and their influence on colour. Differences between the annealing characteristics of brown coloured natural and CVD diamonds suggest that the defect or defects responsible for the brown colour might be different for each type of diamond. The focus of this research work is the analysis of vacancy defects of the order of 1nm in size using aberration corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (AC-STEM). The sub-nanometre size probe afforded by this technique allows such defect structures to be resolved much more readily than with conventional high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM). Small-scale contrast variations are apparent in the lattice images of brown diamonds but not of the colourless variety. These features have been compared to simulated phase contrast images of vacancy clusters in diamond.2) Yellow / Green coloured synthetic diamonds grown using metal solvent catalystSynthetic diamonds for jewellery and industrial applications are routinely manufactured under high pressure-temperature (HPHT) conditions that closely resemble those found during the creation of natural diamonds. Although the manufacturing equipment can vary in design, the HPHT process that occurs inside the reaction vessel remains essentially the same. During processing, the carbon source material is dissolved into a molten metal and then precipitated onto tiny seed diamonds that are added to the reaction chamber. Much time and effort has been expended in refining this process to reduce impurities and defects in the finished diamonds. The presence of remnant transition metal atoms (e.g. nickel) in the crystal structure influences the electronic properties and in particular the colour of the diamonds. The position and configuration of these metallic defects has previously been studied by a variety of analytical techniques, including optical absorption-luminescence spectroscopy and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy (EPR). These studies have proposed a number of optically active nickel centres at both substitutional and interstitial sites. Their association with vacancies and nitrogen atoms has also been highlighted. This work uses electron microscopy and spectroscopy to characterise the nickel defects in synthetic type 1b diamonds.

Des amas de lacunes ont été observés et caractérisés expérimentalement dans les métaux de haute pureté après déformation plastique ou après une suite de traitements thermiques particuliers. Ces amas sont des obstacles à la propagation des dislocations et peuvent par conséquent induire un durcissement du métal.Cette étude par simulations numériques a permis d'explorer différents mécanismes de propagation de dislocations dans une concentration d'amas en fonction de la contrainte de cisaillement appliquée et de la température. À haute contrainte, la force appliquée sur la dislocation devient supérieure aux forces d'ancrage s’exerçant sur la ligne. La dislocation franchit la distribution d'amas en glissant et en cisaillant les amas. La dépendance de la force d'ancrage en fonction de la taille de l'amas est ajustée sur nos simulations de statique moléculaire. Dans ce domaine de contrainte, les configurations d'amas ancrant la dislocation sont rares et l'activation thermique suffit à désancrer la ligne. La probabilité de désancrer la ligne dépend de l'enthalpie d'activation, un paramètre que nous avons également estimé à l'aide d'un modèle analytique ajusté sur nos résultats atomistiques. À plus faible contrainte, lorsque la force appliquée est inférieure aux forces d'ancrage induites par les amas, la probabilité que la dislocation se désancre uniquement par glissement devient faible. La diffusion des lacunes, émises préférentiellement des amas, intervient alors et favorise la formation de crans. Cela contribue au désancrage de la ligne. Ce mécanisme est le glissement assisté par la montée. Les barrières d'émission, d'absorption et de migration de lacunes ont été déterminées par statique moléculaire et sont fortement dépendantes du champ élastique et de la distorsion du réseau atomique générés par la présence de la dislocation. Cela induit une forte anisotropie de diffusion au voisinage des dislocations qui conduit notamment au mécanisme de 'pipe diffusion'. L'évolution au cours du temps de l'ensemble de ces mécanismes a été étudiée à l'aide d'un modèle de ligne élastique couplé à un algorithme de Monte Carlo cinétique dont l'ensemble des barrières d'énergie provient de nos simulations atomistiques. Moyennant les hypothèses du modèle, nous avons alors obtenu une estimation de la vitesse des dislocations en fonction de la contrainte et de la température appliquée. Nous avons ensuite utilisé la loi d'Orowan pour estimer la vitesse de déformation liée à ces mécanismes. / Vacancy clusters have been observed and characterized experimentally in highly pure metals after plastic deformation or after a particular sequence of heat treatments. These clusters hinder the dislocation propagation and can therefore harden the metal.Using numerical simulations we have explored different mecanisms of dislocation propagation through a vacancy-cluster distribution, for several applied shear stress and temperature. At high stresses, the force applied on the dislocation becomes greater than the pinning forces acting on the line. The dislocation gets through the cluster distribution by gliding and shearing the clusters. The dependence of the pinning force with the cluster size is adjusted on our molecular static simulations. In this stress range, the pinning configurations are rare and the thermal activation is sufficient to unpin the line. The probability for the line to pass the pinning configuration depends on the activation enthalpy, a parameter that we have also estimated using an analytical model adjusted on our atomistic results. At lower stresses, when the applied force is below the pinning forces induced by the cluster, the probability that the dislocation unpins by pure glide becomes negligeable. The diffusion of vacancies, emitted preferentially from the vacancy clusters, intervenes and promotes the formation of jogs that contributes to the unpinning of the line. Such a mecanism is the glide assisted by climb. The emission, the absorption and the vacancy migration barriers have been determined by molecular static and are highly dependent on the elastic field and the atomic network distortion induced by the dislocation. This promotes a strong diffusion anisotropy in the vicinity of the dislocations which leads in particular to the pipe diffusion mechanism. The evolution with time of all these mechanisms has been studied using an elastic line model coupled to a kinetic Monte Carlo algorithm in which the parameters come from our atomistic simulations. According to the model assumptions, we obtained an estimation of dislocation velocity as a function of the applied shear stress and the temperature. We used the Orowan's law to estimate the strain rate related to such mechanisms.

The complete and accurate thermodynamic and kinetic description of any systemis crucialfor understanding and predicting its properties. A particular interest is in systemsthat are used for some practical applications and have to be constantly improved usingmodification of their composition and structure. This task can be quite accuratelysolved at a fundamental level by density functional theory methods. Thesemethods areapplied to two practically important systems Fe-Cr and TiC-ZrC.The elastic properties of pure iron and substitutionally disordered Fe-Cr alloy are investigatedas a function of temperature and concentration using first-principles electronicstructurecalculations by the exact muffin-tin orbitals method. The temperature effectson the elastic properties are included via the electronic, magnetic, and lattice expansioncontributions. It is shown that the degree of magnetic order in both pure iron andFe90Cr10 alloy mainly determines the dramatic change of the elastic anisotropy of thesematerials at elevated temperatures. A peculiarity in the concentration dependence ofthe elastic constants in Fe-rich alloys is demonstrated and related to a change in theFermi surface topology.A thermodynamic model for the magnetic alloys is developed from first principles andapplied to the calculation of bcc Fe-Cr phase diagram. Various contributions to the freeenergy (magnetic, electronic, and phonon) are estimated and included in the model. Inparticular, it is found that magnetic short range order effects are important just abovethe Curie temperature. The model is applied for calculating phase equilibria in disorderedbcc Fe-Cr alloys. Model calculations reproduce a feature known as a Nishizawahorn for the Fe-rich high-temperature part of the phase diagram.The investigation of the TiC-ZrC system includes a detailed study of the defect formationenergies and migration barriers of point defects and defect complexes involvedin the diffusion process. It is found, using ab initio atomistic simulations of vacancymediateddiffusion processes in TiC and ZrC, that a special self-diffusion mechanism isoperative for metal atom diffusion in sub-stoichiometric carbides. It involves a noveltype of a stable point defect, a metal vacancy ”dressed” in a shell of carbon vacancies.It is shown that this vacancy cluster is strongly bound and can propagate through thelattice without dissociating. / <p>QC 20120604</p> / HERO-M

In the presented thesis we study the changes in distribution of the size of vacancy clusters in metals processed by severe plastic deformation, so called ul- tra fine grained materials. We use a modern non-destructive method of positron annihilation spectroscopy, which is one of the few methods that allow us to inves- tigate point defects like vacancies with sizes of a few ˚A. The obtained spectra of positrons annihilating in the samples enable us to determine changes of vacancy cluster sizes depending on temperature or severity of the deformation applied on the samples. 1