Predicting the melting temperatures of bulk materials

¹ Institute of Modern Physics, Fudan University - Shanghai 200433, PRC
² Applied Ion Beam Physics Laboratory, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education, Fudan University Shanghai 200433, PRC
³ Dongfang Turbine Co., Ltd. - Deyang 618000, PRC
⁴ Department of Physics, Shanghai Normal University - Shanghai 200234, PRC
⁵ Department of Optical Science and Engineering, State Key Lab for Advanced Photonic Materials and Devices, Fudan University - Shanghai 200433, PRC

^a xjning@fudan.edu.cn

Received: 22 June 2010
Accepted: 3 August 2010

Abstract

Design of crystal materials requires predicting melting temperatures, challenging current theories of material design. By introducing the concept of condensing potential (CP), it is shown that melting temperatures are proportional to CP^1/2 for a series of fcc metals (Ni, Cu, Al, Ir, Rh, Ag, Pd, Pt). In order to understand the dependence of melting upon different surfaces of the same crystal, a new concept of surface melting potential (SMP) is introduced, showing that the surface melting points increase monotonically with increasing SMP. Due to the calculation simplicity of CP and SMP, this evaluating system might prove a convenient way to predict melting temperatures of newly designed materials.