Melting transitions in metallic elements correlated with shear modulus and atomic volume

Authors: Matthai, C. C.¹; March, N. H.²

Source: Physics and Chemistry of Liquids, Volume 44, Number 3, June 2006 , pp. 329-336(8)

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Abstract:

We show that two quite recent treatments of dislocation-mediated melting transitions result in the thermal energy associated with the melting temperature, T m , being expressed as a product of a volume factor and a combination of elastic constants times a lattice structure-dependent factor. We further show that the result for the latent heat of fusion L m obtained in one of these studies leads to the ratio L m / G Ω, where G is the shear modulus at melting and Ω the atomic volume, being a constant. Since the ratio of the vacancy formation energy to G Ω is also found to be roughly constant, we suggest that the factor G Ω at melting is crucial in determining the melting temperature, the latent heat of fusion and the vacancy formation energy and we comment on the reasons why this should be so.

Keywords: Melting transition; Dislocation model

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00319100500284926

Affiliations: 1: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK 2: Materials Science and Engineering Department, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

Publication date: 2006-06-01