SURFACE MELTING OF ALUMINUM

The Landau-type theory of inhomogeneous systems is applied to study th e surface melting of aluminum. In order to describe the bulk propertie s, the potentials obtained ab initio for aluminum by Straub et al. are introduced. Conditions for appearance of surface melting and surface non-melting are formulated. It is found that the calculated surface me lting temperature depends on parameters of the theory and is always lo wer than that obtained experimentally for AI(110) face. The temperatur e dependence of the quasi-liquid layer thickness exhibits logarithmic behavior in accordance with the experiments. The parameters of the the ory can be correlated with experimentally verified quantities. (C) 199 8 Elsevier Science S.A.