Molten rare earth tri-halides: Prediction of surface tension

Abstract

Despite the fact that the manuscript targets surface tension as a thermodynamic parameter, the focus of the work is on the examination of a model targeting material properties. The surface tension of about fifty lanthanide(III) trihalide salts, at their corresponding melting points, was determined by a model developed by the author. The equation requires enthalpies of sublimation, molar volume and internuclear distance, with the data available in the literature. The developed idea leads to some worthwhile results. The calculated surface tension values are quite small, for all the salts under study, which lie in the range 55–250mJm−2. The presented results are validated by comparison with some of the models that are widely used in the literature, and they agree well with the existing experimental data.