A simple model for large-scale simulations of fcc metals with explicit treatment of electrons

Abstract

The continuing advance in computational power is beginning to make accurate electronic structure calculations routine. Yet, where physics emerges through the dynamics of tens of thousands of atoms in metals, simplifications must be made to the electronic Hamiltonian. We present the simplest extension to a single s-band model [A.P. Sutton, T.N. Todorov, M.J. Cawkwell and J. Hoekstra, Phil. Mag. A 81 (2001) p.1833.] of metallic bonding, namely, the addition of a second s-band. We show that this addition yields a reasonable description of the density of states at the Fermi level, the cohesive energy, formation energies of point defects and elastic constants of some face-centred cubic (fcc) metals.