Thermal destiny of an ionic crystal

Recently it has been shown that defect-defect interactions leading to anoma lous rise in defect concentrations and eventually to phase transitions into a disordered state can be successfully described by a quasi defect lattice model [1]. Using this approach the fact is highlighted that the evolution of an ionic crystal from the perfect state at T = 0 K to a weakly defective ideal crystal and eventually via passing a pre-melting regime to a superio nic crystal (or melt) is unavoidable (given sufficient stability) and can b e roughly phenomenologically calculated by using a few basic parameters onl y. Semi-empirical relations (e.g. Tammann rule) can be quantified in this w ay.