Quantum Mechanical Approach to Understanding Structural, Electronic and Mechanical Properties of Intermetallics

摘要

Our primary goal is to study and develop alloying concepts for understanding intermetallic alloys as derived from a highly precise quantum mechanical approach. Thus, a major part of our effort is to study and determine ductilizing effects and to work closely with experimental efforts to evaluate the applicability of the theoretical approach to alloy design. Specifically we have studied a number of materials problems to obtain first principles information of relevance to alloy stability and design of structural materials. Fundamental information has been obtained about the structural and electronic properties in order to predict stable and metastable phases and how alloying affects bonding, crystal order and crystal symmetry. Our approach addresses questions of a metallurgical nature, such as phase stability, crystal structure, equilibrium lattice constants, and mechanical properties. For the ordered compounds, tailoring the chemistry of these alloys to obtain higher symmetry (and thus more ductile) crystalline phases is extremely important. The research seeks to explore a new capability for modelling materials and their properties on the computer which have not yet been made in practice. (mjm)