No Arabic abstract
The chemical ordering transition in a binary alloy is examined using classical density functional theory for a binary mixture. The ordered lattice is assumed to be obtained from the disordered lattice by a volume change only, as in L1_2 ordering from an face centered cubic chemically disordered crystal. Using the simplest possible approach, second order truncation of the expansion, non-overlapping Gaussian distributions at the sites, and expansion of the correlation functions about the sites, a very tractable expansion is obtained. Under these assumptions the expansion consists of the same terms as the lattice gas formalism where the lattice is implicitly taken as fixed, plus additional interaction terms, and an additional entropy term. This additional entropy term represents a lowest order approximation to the vibrational entropy change.
Classical density functional theory for finite temperatures is usually formulated in the grand-canonical ensemble where arbitrary variations of the local density are possible. However, in many cases the systems of interest are closed with respect to mass, e.g. canonical systems with fixed temperature and particle number. Although the tools of standard, grand-canonical density functional theory are often used in an ad hoc manner to study closed systems, their formulation directly in the canonical ensemble has so far not been known. In this work, the fundamental theorems underlying classical DFT are revisited and carefully compared in the two ensembles showing that there are only trivial formal differences. The practicality of DFT in the canonical ensemble is then illustrated by deriving the exact Helmholtz functional for several systems: the ideal gas, certain restricted geometries in arbitrary numbers of dimensions and finally a system of two hard-spheres in one dimension (hard rods) in a small cavity. Some remarkable similarities between the ensembles are apparent even for small systems with the latter showing strong echoes of the famous exact of result of Percus in the grand-canonical ensemble.
Many features of granular media can be modelled as a fluid of hard spheres with {em inelastic} collisions. Under rapid flow conditions, the macroscopic behavior of grains can be described through hydrodynamic equations. At low-density, a fundamental basis for the derivation of the hydrodynamic equations and explicit expressions for the transport coefficients appearing in them is provided by the Boltzmann kinetic theory conveniently modified to account for inelastic binary collisions. The goal of this chapter is to give an overview of the recent advances made for binary granular gases by using kinetic theory tools. Some of the results presented here cover aspects such as transport properties, energy nonequipartition, instabilities, segregation or mixing, non-Newtonian behavior, .... In addition, comparison of the analytical results with those obtained from Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations is also carried out, showing the reliability of kinetic theory to describe granular flows even for strong dissipation.
A previous analysis of scaling, bounds, and inequalities for the non-interacting functionals of thermal density functional theory is extended to the full interacting functionals. The results are obtained from analysis of the related functionals from the equilibrium statistical mechanics of thermodynamics for an inhomogeneous system. Their extension to the functionals of density functional theory is described.
The Jeans stability criterium for gravitational collapse is examined for the case of an inert binary mixture in local equilibrium, neglectinq dissipative effects. The corresponding transport equations are established using kinetic theory within the Euler regime approximation. It is shown that the corresponding dispertion relation is modified, yielding corrections to the Jeans wave number. This formalism that can be generalized for several interesting cases involving dissipation.
High-entropy alloys (HEAs), which have been intensely studied due to their excellent mechanical properties, generally refer to alloys with multiple equimolar or nearly equimolar elements. According to this definition, Si-Ge-Sn alloys with equal or comparable concentrations of the three Group IV elements belong to the category of HEAs. As a result, the equimolar elements of Si-Ge-Sn alloys likely cause their atomic structures to exhibit the same core effects of metallic HEAs such as lattice distortion. Here we apply density functional theory (DFT) calculations to show that the SiGeSn HEA indeed exhibits a large local distortion effect. Unlike metallic HEAs, our Monte Carlo and DFT calculations show that the SiGeSn HEA exhibits no chemical short-range order due to the similar electronegativity of the constituent elements, thereby increasing the configurational entropy of the SiGeSn HEA. Hybrid density functional calculations show that the SiGeSn HEA remains semiconducting with a band gap of 0.38 eV, promising for economical and compatible mid-infrared optoelectronics applications. We then study the energetics of neutral single Si, Ge, and Sn vacancies and (expectedly) find wide distributions of vacancy formation energies, similar to those found in metallic HEAs. However, we also find anomalously small lower bounds (e.g., 0.04 eV for a Si vacancy) in the energy distributions, which arise from the bond reformation near the vacancy. Such small vacancy formation energies and their associated bond reformations retain the semiconducting behavior of the SiGeSn HEA, which may be a signature feature of a semiconducting HEA that differentiates from metallic HEAs.