The thermal expansion of gold: point defect concentrations and pre-melting in a face-centred cubic metal.

ABSTRACT: On the basis of ab initio computer simulations, pre-melting phenomena have been suggested to occur in the elastic properties of hexagonal close-packed iron under the conditions of the Earth's inner core just before melting. The extent to which these pre-melting effects might also occur in the physical properties of face-centred cubic metals has been investigated here under more experimentally accessible conditions for gold, allowing for comparison with future computer simulations of this material. The thermal expansion of gold has been determined by X-ray powder diffraction from 40 K up to the melting point (1337 K). For the entire temperature range investigated, the unit-cell volume can be represented in the following way: a second-order Grüneisen approximation to the zero-pressure

SUBMITTER: Pamato MG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5884389 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature