Thermodynamics of liquid Al–In, Ag–In and In–Sb alloys from a four-atom cluster model

Abstract

Abstract A model based on a cluster of four atoms has been used to obtain higher-order conditional probabilities that describe the atomic correlations in Al–In, Ag–In and In–Sb liquid alloys. Using the value of the ordering energy obtained from the model, some thermodynamic quantities such as Gibbs energy of mixing and concentration-concentration fluctuations in the long wavelength limit were calculated for these alloys. Our study of the energetics of these liquid alloys reveals that while In–Sb and Ag–In are both chemically ordered or heterocoordinated systems, Al–In is a segregating system. Furthermore, the degree of order in liquid In–Sb alloys is higher than that in liquid Ag–In alloys.