Defect modes due to substitutional impurities in FCC lattice: Green's function approach

Abstract

Lattice dynamical study of monoatomic fcc crystals containing substitutional impurities has been made by the Green's function technique, using group theory. The impurity and its 12 nearest neighbors constitute an XY 12 impurity space having O h symmetry. The phonon Green function matrix is analyzed according to the irreducible representations of the point group pertaining to the substitutional impurity in the fcc lattice. The effects due to change in mass at the impurity site and the change in nearest neighbor force constants for the impurity-host atom interactions are taken into account. Analytical expressions for the various modes of vibrations pertaining to the defect space have been obtained. Local mode frequencies due to various substitutional impurities, corresponding to F 1u mode (defect atom moving) have been computed. A special model is chosen for the defecthost force and it is assumed that there are no distortions of the lattice structure due to the defect. A Kihara hardcore potential with parameters fitted to neutron data has been used to compute lattice dynamics and Green functions of the host lattices. Our theoretical results have been compared with available experimental and theoretical results. Our results show reasonably good agreement with experimental results.