First-principles study of point defects at a semicoherent interface

Most of the atomistic modeling of semicoherent metal-metal interfaces has so far been based on the use of semiempirical interatomic potentials. We show that key conclusions drawn from previous studies are in contradiction with more precise ab-initio calculations. In particular we find that single point defects do not delocalize, but remain compact near the interfacial plane in Cu-Nb multilayers. We give a simple qualitative explanation for this difference on the basis of the well known limited transferability of empirical potentials.