Electronic theory of the chemical short-range order in liquid and amorphous transition-metal alloys.

Abstract

We present microscopic calculations of the chemical short-range order in amorphous and liquid alloys of two transition metals. Our approach is based on a model one-band tight-binding Hamiltonian and a thermodynamic variational technique founded on the Gibbs-Bogolyubov inequality and a hard-sphere Yukawa fluid as a reference system. We calculate the Bhatia-Thornton partial structure factors of ${\mathrm{Ni}}_{\mathrm{x}}$${\mathrm{Ti}}_{1\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{x}}$ and ${\mathrm{Ni}}_{\mathrm{x}}$${\mathrm{Zr}}_{1\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{x}}$ alloys and find good agreement with experiment.