EFFECTIVE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN CONCENTRATION FLUCTUATIONS AND CHARGE-TRANSFER IN CHEMICALLY ORDERING LIQUID ALLOYS

Abstract

The correlations between long-wavelength fluctuations of concentration in a liquid binary alloy are determined by a balance between an elastic-strain free energy and an Ornstein-Zernike effective interaction. The latter is extracted from thermodynamic data in the case of the Li-Pb system, which is well known to chemically order with stoichiometric composition corresponding to Li4Pb. Strong attractive interactions between concentration fluctuations near the composition of chemical ordering originate from electronic charge transfer, which is estimated from the electron-ion partial structure factors as functions of composition in the liquid alloy.