Formation of polyanionic clusters in liquid potassium-lead alloys: a molecular-dynamics study

Abstract

The author shows that alloying effects in the effective interatomic potentials lead to a strong preferential interaction between the Pb ions in K-Pb alloys and to the formation of polyanionic clusters not only in the crystal, but also in the liquid alloy. For the first time it is demonstrated that the limitation of the electronic mean free path arising from the strong disorder scattering has a pronounced influence on the interatomic forces and hence on the structure of the liquid alloy.