Plutonium Elastic Moduli, Electron Localization, and Temperature
- National High Magnetic Field Lab, Los Alamos National Laboratory, MS E 536, Los Alamos, NM, 87545 (United States)
In almost all materials, compression is accompanied naturally by stiffening. Even in materials with zero or negative thermal expansion, where warming is accompanied by volume contraction it is the volume change that primarily controls elastic stiffness. Not so in the metal plutonium. In plutonium, alloying with gallium can change the sign of thermal expansion, but for the positive thermal- expansion monoclinic phase as well as the face-centered-cubic phase with either sign of thermal expansion, and the orthorhombic phase, recent measurements of elastic moduli show soften on warming by an order of magnitude more than expected, the shear and compressional moduli track, and volume seems irrelevant. These effects point toward a novel mechanism for electron localization, and have important implication for the pressure dependence of the bulk compressibility. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- Materials Research Society, 506 Keystone Drive, Warrendale, PA, 15086-7573 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21091554
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Symposium Actinides 2008 - Basic Science, Applications and Technology, San Francisco, CA (United States), 24-28 Mar 2008; Other Information: Country of input: France; 3 refs.; Full text available at: http://www.mrs.org/s{sub m}rs/bin.asp?CID=12409&DID=212627&DOC=FILE.PDF; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the symposium Actinides 2008 - Basic Science, Applications and Technology, by Chung, B.; Thompson, J.; Shuh, D.; Albrecht-Schmitt, T.; Gouder, T. (eds.), v. 1104, [260] pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Elastic Anomalies Accompanying Phase Transitions in (CaSr)TiO3 Perovskite III: Experimental Investigation of Polycrystalline Samples
Monte Carlo calculations of the elastic moduli and pressure-volume-temperature equation of state for hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine