Knudsen effusion mass spectrometric determination of mixing thermodynamic data of liquid Ag–In–Sn alloy

Abstract

The vaporisation of a liquid Ag–In–Sn system has been investigated at 1273–1473 K by Knudsen effusion mass spectrometry (KEMS) and the data fitted to a Redlich–Kister–Muggianu (RKM) sub-regular solution model. Nineteen different compositions have been examined at six fixed indium mole fractions, X In = 0.10, 0.117, 0.20, 0.30, 0.40 and 0.50. The ternary L-parameters, the thermodynamic activities and the thermodynamic properties of mixing have been evaluated using standard KEMS procedures and from the measured ion intensity ratios of Ag + to In + and Ag + to Sn +, using a mathematical regression technique described by us for the first time. The intermediate data obtained directly from the regression technique are the RKM ternary L-parameters. From the obtained ternary L-parameters the integral molar excess Gibbs free energy, the excess chemical potentials, the activity coefficients and the activities have been evaluated. Using the temperature dependence of the activities, the integral and partial molar excess enthalpies and entropies were determined. In addition, for comparison, for some compositions, also the Knudsen effusion isothermal evaporation method (IEM) and the Gibbs–Duhem ion intensity ratio method (GD-IIR) were used to determine activities and good agreement was obtained with the data obtained from fitting to the RKM model.