Electronically driven collapse of the bulk modulus in δ -plutonium

Harrison, Neil

doi:10.1073/pnas.1918281117

Title: Electronically driven collapse of the bulk modulus in δ -plutonium

Journal Article · Tue Feb 18 00:00:00 EST 2020 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1918281117· OSTI ID:1616427

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Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Plutonium metal exhibits an anomalously large softening of its bulk modulus at elevated temperatures that is made all the more extraordinary by the finding that it occurs irrespective of whether the thermal expansion coefficient is positive, negative, or zero—representing an extreme departure from conventional Grüneisen scaling. We show here that the cause of this softening is the compressibility of plutonium’s thermally excited electronic configurations, which has thus far not been considered in thermodynamic models. We show that when compressible electronic configurations are thermally activated, they invariably give rise to a softening of the bulk modulus regardless of the sign of their contribution to the thermal expansion. The electronically driven softening of the bulk modulus is shown to be in good agreement with elastic moduli measurements performed on the gallium-stabilized δ phase of plutonium over a range of temperatures and compositions and is shown to grow rapidly at small concentrations of gallium and at high temperatures, where it becomes extremely sensitive to hydrostatic pressure.

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Research Organization:: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program

Grant/Contract Number:: 89233218CNA000001

OSTI ID:: 1616427

Report Number(s):: LA-UR-19-32035

Journal Information:: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 117, Issue 9; ISSN 0027-8424

Publisher:: National Academy of SciencesCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 2 works

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36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
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electronic configurations

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