Evidence for long-range repulsive atomic interactions in metals from bond energy calculations

Abstract

The first and second nearest neighbor bond energies are calculated for a variety of liquid metals from heat of vaporization, density, and surface tension data using a simple pair-wise interaction model of cohesive forces. The first nearest neighbor interaction is found to be attractive, while the second nearest neighbor interaction is repulsive. This longer range repulsive interaction is not surprising, in view of the Friedel oscillations known to exist in the potential function for ion-ion interactions in a metal. It is suggested that γ-plot calculations for solid metals take this repulsion into account.