A simple model for assessing the high pressure melting of metals: nickel, aluminum and platinum

High-pressure melting has been of general interest for our understanding of solid-liquid phase transition due to the importance in high-pressure physi cs and material science, and here a simple model was developed to address t he high-pressure melting of metals. For this simple model, a critical volum e representative for the melting point is determined compared to the refere nce volume. Then employing the relation of thermal pressure and temperature , the melting temperature for solids at high-pressure conditions can be eas ily obtained. The calculated results for nickel and aluminum and platinum i ndicate that this model can well reproduce the high-pressure melting of abo ve metals, in excellent agreement with the existing experimental data. A co mparison between experimental data and our calculated curves reveals that t he melting under extreme compression can be better obtained by this simple model than that by previous empirical melting equations. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.