Be intermetallics are a promising family of materials for the first wall and neutron multiplying applications in future nuclear fusion reactors, owing to their low atomic number, still high beryllium content but improved thermo-mechanical properties over pure beryllium. Due to the difficulties of working with Be, however, they are often poorly characterized. Thus, the crystallography, elastic and magnetic properties, thermodynamical stability, deviation from stoichiometry and order/disorder transformations of intermetallics, which are relevant to Be alloys have been investigated using computer simulation [1,2,3]. These include Be-Fe-Al ternary phases as well as a series of Be-transition metal binaries. Throughout the density functional code CASTEP was employed, coupled with phonon density of states calculations to capture temperature effects. The propensity for intermetallics to act as impurity sinks was also considered.
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